Just poking my head in to confirm that yes, shapechange lasts "indefinitely" (quote from Complete Druid's), and that no, giant eagles don't count as "real world" creatures. The size of shapechange maxes out at brown bear/great cat. Pick a big enough eagle and you could probably carry a toddler, but not all day and almost certainly not without doing at least some damage. But there isn't a flying creature that can carry a full sized halfling or larger that meets the "real world" criteria.

It's a day and a half march to get back to Triel, assuming nothing happens to slow the group down. The prisoners have healed enough to keep up a normal pace, but only barely. So it would be easier to knock them down to a stumbling pace than it would be to do the same to the rest of you. Of course, if Krackor's ioun stone goes with them, they'll continue to get stronger over the course of the march.

No problem with that.

Argh. I was intending to post today, but I woke up with a migraine. I may be tomorrow before I can post.

I could have sworn the DM said the ogre corpses were still where they were?

Oh, they are. The giants on the other hand...

Ahh, I missed where they were missing! I need to reread it then!

It doesn't mention the giants are gone???? I didn't see they were missing? It says we go through the room where the prisoners were held, but does not mention the giants.

Only two people noticed, in the general rush to get the ex-prisoners out. I included them in a private line.

I must have been distracted! ;-)

I don't use private lines very often, but it seemed fitting in this case.

While we are at the giants body question: IIRC, there were dead ogres in one room but dead giants in two rooms.   Have the dead hill giants disappeared from both rooms?

Good question.

You went through three rooms to get to the exit.
1) Room with secret door - contained as many dead minotaurs as expected
2) Very large room with prisoner cages - contained only 2 of the 6 dead hill giants that were expected
3) Entry room - contained all of the dead ogres that were expected

The fourth room, with the dead verbeeg giants, was not on the route out and has not yet been checked.

I'd like to open discussion on flying overland movement rates, since the group is now at a high enough level where that matters.

In 2e, the rule for ground movement is people marching move 2x their movement rate in miles per day. Mounts move 1x their movement per day. So a human marches 24 miles/day and a heavy war horse marches 15 miles per day. Without factoring terrain, obviously.

I could just rule that all flying creatures have the same 1x modifier, but that seems too low. Out of curiosity, I looked up how far hawks can fly in a day, and the answer is apparently 200-300 miles. Which is too high.

I'm thinking of ruling that flying creatures use a 2x modifier. So a hawk would fly 66 miles per day, and a pegasus 96 miles per day. That's pretty decent distance, especially ignoring terrain, without getting too out of hand. But I wanted to see if anyone else had an opinion.

Fine by me.

Land creatures have multipliers for over land pending running, jogging, sprinting. Horses walk as fast as a person but jog quicker and on.
Flying is literally, as the crow flies, making direct distant that much quicker, flying has diving quicker but carry less, flying straight and flat would be quicker.

2x and no negative terrain Modifiers works.

Polymorphing and flying are powerful abilities so should provide worthwhile benefits.  On the other hand, I agree than duck-like 400 miles per day flying might be problematic due to shrinking the world a bit too much.  Gut feeling, flying 3 to 5 times further than can be walked would sound like a good enough advantage to be worth using so the 66 to 96 miles per day work with me too.

I thought we also killed giants in the ogre room.  Did that one disappear too?

Sorry I've been unavailable.  Spring Break + 20th Wedding Anniversary has left me much busier IRL

Which leads to the question: was the wife met at spring break 21 years ago ? :-)

In reply to Torvek Ragdar (msg # 43):

Nah, we'd been dating for a couple of years.  Met online through mutual contacts

No, but there was an ogre leader, which was called out as being larger than the others, which might have caused the confusion.

All of the ogres, as well as the ogre leader, are still there.

Hmmm, am I the only one escorting the prisoners back to town? No one responded to my post.

It's not only you, however, the other two people with the caravan are Kitheras, whose player is swamped, and Kali, whose player has been very sick for the last week and a half.

I'm in the process of adding an additional player, who will be one of the rescued. We're still building out the mechanics, but I'm adding them shortly, so hopefully they'll be able to start interacting soon.

Ouch, I wondered why it was so quiet. Thanks for the heads up.