Update on "Trading In" House Rule

DF Whiterock uses a house rule for character advancement: you can "trade in" points spent in advantages or secondary attributes or skills when buying bigger attributes or advantages that in some sense include the previous attributes, as long as nothing gets worse.  It's a "zero-to-hero" game where I gave starting PCs fewer than normal points for a DF or DFRPG game, so this makes raising attributes to heroic levels during play more attainable, without running the risk of keeping lots of character points unspent rather than helping the character survive Right Now.

As an example, a PC can spend 2 points to buy +1 HP.  Then later they can spend 3 points for +1 Lifting ST.  Then still later they can spent 5 points, plus cash in the HP and the Lifting ST, for +1 ST (costs 10 points).

For another example, a PC with 4 points each in 5 DX-based skills can take 2 points out of each of those skills, plus spend 10 points, to get +1 to DX (which costs 20 points.)  Those skills end up at the same level.  (Minor technical nitpick: you can argue that those skills didn't get worse when based on DX, but they did get worse when shifted to another attribute, so maybe I shouldn't allow this since some aspect of the PC did get a tiny bit worse when they moved points from skills to attribute.  I think that's a reasonable objection, but I allow it anyway, because it's so minor.  It's like letting a PC get away with not defining one of his quirks until the third session.)

As a counterexample, I would not let a PC trade Fit (5 points, +1 to HT rolls and also double FP recovery) plus 5 points for +1 HT.  Because that would lose the double FP recovery, which is significant.

I've used this rule in two campaigns, with both new and experienced players.  The experienced players use it more, because they plan their character advancement more and know the rules better.  But I don't think it's abusive.  I don't think it's hurt anything.  It just makes the improvement curve a bit smoother, since the PC raises DX skills for a few sessions before buying DX, or raises spells a bit before buying Magery, or gets the Basic Speed the session before the full point of DX or HT.  And it encourages players to spend points a bit sooner, since that doesn't cost them the chance of a bigger win, which helps them survive.

Most house rules are designed to stop players from running roughshod over their enemies, so this is one of the few that works in the players' favor (but only a little bit), which makes it popular. 

I think I'll continue allowing this in future games.

DF Whiterock Session 21: Clockwork

Date:

2018-09-21

Weather:

Overcast, chilly

Player Characters:

Bojack Axeman (Infinitepudding), Dwarf Martial Artist, 180 points

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 204 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 249 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 237 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 223 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 259 points

Significant NPCs:

Animated pushcart

Xorn

3 Shocker Lizards

After successfully plundering a small dragon horde, the party spent a week in Cillamar training and shopping.  Zaber looked for some high-quality lockpicks to get a better shot at picking the excellent lock on the Clockwork Academy's front door, but couldn't find any.

Seépravir took the magical jade strings from the dragon hoard, and went looking for an expert who might be able to figure out if they went with a harp.  She found a gnomish luthier named Russet, who thought the strings were kind of thick for a harp, and might go better with a bass lyre.  Russet offered to build a harp for the strings, but Seépravir decided to wait.

Zaber and Garreth spent some time drinking and looking for rumors, and heard more tales of undead gnome wererats in the sewers under Cillmar, and secretive arcanists meeting at Castle Whiterock under the full moon.

Elias visited the templates of Elyr and Justicia, looking for help and quests, and found out that swamp rot was going around and that anyone with Cure Disease could do some good.  So he went looking for a scroll of Cure Disease, but failed to find one.  Then Garreth went looking for a scroll of Cure Disease, and rolled a critical success.  So Garreth gave Elias the scroll and Elias learned Cure Disease and spent some time helping sick townsfolk and refugees.  (How does a half-orc warrior find a cleric scroll that a wealthy cleric can't find?  I'm not sure.  Maybe I need to change the rule to one roll per item, rather than one roll per PC.)

The party gathered at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar.  There was a dwarf there, looking confused because it's more of an elf inn (lute playing, hard carrot juice) than a dwarf inn (drinking songs, bobbing in kegs of ale for more ale).  Immediately recognizing a new PC, Garreth introduced himself to the dwarf, whose name was Bojack, and who had no armor but incredibly thick and tough skin.  He gave Bojack his extra beer (Garreth is a big guy with Resist Poison so tends to order two drinks at a time) and immediately made a friend.  Polly quizzed Bojack to make sure he didn't like orcs, which he didn't, so that was good enough for her.  Ixnay the shoulder dragon saw Garreth giving free beer to the dwarf and decided to get in on that action, then went back to sleep.  Polly enjoyed some hard carrot juice.

Everyone decided they'd had enough town and started heading for the exit, then Garreth remembered they had dragon scales to sell, but Quintus the alchemist wasn't in the room, and at that point the party was hiking, so they decided to deal with dragon scales next week.  They were pushing four wheelbarrows (the thrifty adventurer's wagon) between the six of them.   Bojack critically succeeded on his Hiking roll, showing a real knack for leading the way.

Seépravir had learned some annoying interesting new spells, Seek Magic and Seek Earth and Shape Earth and Seeker and See Secrets.  So suddenly the GM needed to know the nearest spell, magic item, magical being, and every kind of metal and stone.  The first couple of castings were foiled by finding stuff on the party, but then Seépravir remembered to exclude those and it was time for the treasure sonar.  She found some silver and magic in a spider cave that had been cleaned out last week; the PCs had searched a pit, and searched the walls for secret doors, but hadn't done a proper search of the whole room.

They went back down to the cave with the Flowstone Organ, the imprisoned air elemental, and the locked (and hidden behind an illusion, that Katanya had showed them how to bypass last time) door to the Clockwork Academy.  Garreth tried the key that they'd found on the draconic troglodyte priest, and it fit!  He told Bojack to just walk through the wall, as it was an illusion, but the dwarf was skeptical.  He made his Will roll to trust Garreth and just walk smack into the wall, and managed to walk through the illusion.

At that point, an intra-party debate ensued.  About half the group wanted to go forward to the Clockwork Academy, and the other half wanted to go loot the spider cave for leftover treasure first, then visit the Clockwork Academy.  After about five minutes of indecision, I asked the players to just vote so we could move forward.  It was 4-2 to get the treasure first, so they went to the spider cave.  

Now, knowing there was leftover treasure there, they headed back and started looking for treasure, but nothing was obvious.  So Seépravir cast Seek Magic again to home right in on the right part of the room, against the wall behind some webs.  Seépravir was adamant that nobody burn any webs because they might be valuable, so some labor-intensive minimally-destructive web clearing was needed.  Garreth rolled a critical success (the third one of the session already, all on little minor things) and figured out that a little bit of spit in the right place could disentangle webs from walls.  So he made a nice pile of spider silk in the corner, while others looted.  Zaber found a short sword (which Seépravir thought was fine quality), a pouch with a few coins, and a copper scroll case.  The scroll case contained a magic scroll, which Seépravir rudely grabbed from Zaber, and which ended up being a scroll of Shape Earth, which Seépravir had just learned.  Zaber did a bit more searching in the other corner, and found a silver necklace, with a black spider on it.  It looked like creepy Drow jewelry, but it also looked valuable, so they took it.

At that point Polly announced that it had been enough time playing with webs and treasure without killing any bad guys, so everyone headed back toward the Clockwork Academy.  Behind the door was a straight passage, only 5 feet high (so everyone but Bojack and Polly had to duck), with some writing in Gnome on the walls, and also some happy pastoral art with squirrels.  Rather than being pitch black like most dungeon passages, this one was dimly lit by occasional permanent Continual Light spells, so that the people with Night Vision could function fine, and those without it could at least see a bit.

Nobody read Gnome, so Elias cast Gift of Letters on himself.  He was at -5 for maintaining Bless spells on everyone else in the party (including Bojack who got Blessed about 5 minutes after he showed up), so it took him a bunch of tries, then some rest, then some more tries, but he eventually cast it.  And found out that the signs said "Right: Dormitory" and "Left: Assembly Hall."  The group picked left.

The passage went left for a while, then there were some stairs down into a room.  I said "stop" because I wanted to read the room description, but before I could finish reading the room description, half the party went running in, while the other half stayed put and waited for more information like good adventurers.  Oops.

The room was a workshop, full of bits of metal and tools and with a crane on one side.  The ones who charged forward got ambushed from behind by an animated pushcart.  It slammed into Elias from behind, with total surprise, hard enough to knock him prone and leave a mark.  Then it went after Zaber, and hit him, but not hard enough to knock him down.  By that time the PCs had recovered from surprise and were turning to face the pushcart and fight it.  But Polly didn't have to run up, just shoot it with her overstrength bow, and she did, and the pushcart stopped moving and became a regular pushcart with a broken wheel.  (Animated pushcarts have a pretty good failure mode, like escalators.)

Zaber jumped on the cart because he could, and the rest of the PCs ambled into the room, and Elias used some Major Healing scrolls to fix his back where the cart had run him over, and Polly recovered one of her arrows.  And then something tried to Death From Above Garreth.  He made his hearing roll, and wasn't surprised, but the dropping monster rolled a critical hit.  Of course he used Luck, which turned the crit into a regular hit, and then he dodged it.  And found he was standing toe-to-toe with a trilaterally symmetrical rock creature with 3 arms and a huge centrally-located mouth.  Nobody knew what it was, except that I had labelled the token "Xorn" in Roll20, so I guess everyone kinda knew what it was.

Garreth fast-drew his katana and chopped at the xorn twice, but it dodged.  Bojack used Uninterrupted Flurry, a chi power that would let him move at double speed for a few seconds, after wasting a second to start it up.  Seépravir started casting Death Vision.  Polly fired arrows, but it dodged them.  Zaber fast-drew his knife.

The xorn tried to bite Garreth, but he parried.  This time he went with a single Deceptive Attack to greatly reduce the xorn's defenses, and it worked, with the penetrating katana taking out a big hunk of rock.  Elias ran up.  Bojack readied his pick, then went for an All-Out Attack (Double) to smash the xorn, but he didn't do enough damage to penetrate its thick rocky hide.  Seépravir finished casting her Death Vision, and the xorn was stunned, No Saving Throw.  (That's a joke because this is a converted D&D adventure; of course the proper GURPS / DFRPG terminology is No Resistance Roll.)  

Polly fired a couple of arrows into the stunned xorn, and it failed its consciousness check.  Which didn't stop Garreth from chopping it up a bit more just to be sure.  Elias healed Zaber.  Polly recovered arrows then rested (firing that huge bow is tiring), then went to check out the beam with the crane on it.  The crane had a crank, but it was rusted stuck.  Zaber climbed up to check it out, rather than using the nearby stairs like a normal person.  Garreth ambled over to exert strength on it, but it still just made a lot of noise and didn't move.  Seépravir then tried a Grease spell, which unstuck things, but it still didn't do anything useful, as something had been broken.

Zaber started scrounging around the room for useful stuff, and found a few pieces of interesting-looking metal without too many Xorn bite marks.  Seépravir found a glass panel under the crane, with some Gnomish writing near it and a magical scarab behind it.  Elias cast Gift of Letters again, and the writing said "In emergency, break glass."  Seépravir decided to cast Analyze Magic on the scarab, a multi-hour process.

While she was doing that, Polly got bored and decided to do some exploring.  She found a rubble-filled passage to the east.  After a few minutes of clearing rubble, it led to a room, with a small hatch, leading to a very narrow vertical passage down.  Polly couldn't help herself, and atttempted to squeeze in.  She made an amazing roll on her default Escape check, and squeezed in, as the other players cringed.  Polly went 20 feet down a chimney, and found an iron door.  She opened the door, and saw 3 small blue lizards, which charged her.  Polly fired a couple of arrows at a lizard, which dodged them.  Then two lizards run up next to Polly and attacker her with lightning!  One hit, but she resisted with DX for half-damage, which caused some mild complaints as that wasn't a very GURPSy mechanic.  The other missed, and the third one closed up.

Outnumbered 3 to 1 by lizards that could shock her, Polly did the sensible thing and slammed the door.  Unfortunately, lightning attacks go through metal doors, and a big electrical zap came through.  Polly made her DX roll for half damage, but half damage was 15 hit points, enough to put Polly in deep trouble.  At that point, her trusty Bless spell decided that, nope, she wasn't hit by that lightning after all, and fizzled out.  And Polly started climbing up the shaft as fast as she could.

Eventually, Seépravir's Analyze Magic finished and determined that the scarab had Detect Golems, and more powers still to be detected.  Garreth decided that was good enough, smashed the glass, and took the scarab.  It didn't zap him or anything, so he passed it to Seépravir.

There were two more small hatches in the workroom, and Zaber checked them for traps, but they were full of rubble.  Zaber tried to squeeze in, but failed.  Seépravir tried detecting golems with the scarab, but didn't find any.  We were just about out of time, so the group decided to go back to town.

GM's Comments:

I was surprised the group missed the spider's treasure last session, because they're usually pretty good at remembering to search everything.  But Seek Magic and Seek Earth (for silver) both led to that room, so they only postponed finding the treasure for a week.  Long-distance divination spells are annoying for the GM, because it's that much more information that he has to have ready.  But I'll figure something out.

The animated pushcart was pretty good at slamming, but not so good at taking damage.  The Xorn was pretty buff, but not quite up to being chopping by Garreth and shot by Polly while being stunned by Seépravir, who now has at least 3 different ways to stun you.

Impulsiveness almost killed the elf.  The skinny little chimney meant that nobody could help Polly, and the three lightning lizards almost shocked her to death.  But Bless is the most broken spell in GURPS, and it saved her long enough to run away.  Those might be the first enemies in Castle Whiterock that the PCs have fled from.  (Granted, it was only one PC.)

Elias once again saved someone's life with Bless and multiplied the value of all the treasure found by 2.5 with Very Wealthy.  And he can cast healing spells, though not particular well because of the -5 from keeping 5 Bless spells up.  I think basically every adventuring party on the planet would try to recruit Elias.

Bojack's an interesting character, but we didn't get to see him do much yet.  His pick didn't penetrate the Xorn, and then it was unconscious before he got a second try.  Stay tuned to see his varied talents.

Next week, I suspect the PCs will be back for another shot at the Clockwork Academy.  Do they go down the skinny shaft after the shock lizards, or do they go straight or turn right instead of left?  We'll find out next time.

DF Whiterock Session 20: Red Dragon

Date:

2018-09-14

Weather:

Hot, Mostly Cloudy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 199 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 244 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 232 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 218 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 254 points

Significant NPCs:

Hugin, Human mercenary

Katanya Glimer, Gnome sorceress

Colossal spider

Skeletal Wyrmling

Red dragon

Cave Moray (a.k.a. Ceiling Snake)

We started in the dungeon, in combat time.  In the previous session, Elias had found a secret door, and Elias and Ibizaber had started exploring and found some huge webs behind it.  But we didn't have time to fight a huge spider, so we paused there.

Now, Elias tried burning the webs with his flail with Flaming Weapon cast on it, while Ibizaber backed away from the smelly smoldering webs, and Polly acrobatically jumped off the dragon statue she had been climbing on to come join the party.  Ibizaber spotted a trap door under some of the webs.  (It wasn't easy to spot through all the webs and smoke, but he had crazy-high magically enhanced Perception, and I rolled a 3.)  Everyone clumped up and waited for the webs to burn.

Eventually, the colossal (SM +2) spider that was waiting above the pit decided that nobody was going to fall in it, and got impatient and decided to hop down and bite Seépravir.  Garreth had taken a Wait maneuver, so he got to attack its front legs as they came into range, and he lopped off both of them.  Fortunately for the spider, it still had 6 legs left, so it got to keep moving, and tried to bite Seépravir, and rolled a critical hit.  Unfortunately for the spider, Seépravir used her Luck to negate the crit, and the spider rolled a 16 on one of the forced rerolls, a whiff.  Polly then fired a couple of bodkin arrows into her best guess at the spider's skull area, and guessed right, and killed the spider.

After waiting for more spiders, which didn't appear, Ibizaber dissected the spider's poison sac and collected some poison.  Then Garreth chopped up the spider corpse into manageable bits and moved them away from the pit, so that Zaber and Polly could search inside.  They didn't find anything good in there.  Then Zaber and Polly went around the room searching for secret doors, and didn't find any of those either.  Polly got herself stuck in a web once, but was able to wiggle out.

Eventually the PCs decided there were no secret doors, and Seépravir recast Invisibility and Mage-Stealth on Zaber and then they all returned to the giant room where they had killed the dragon/trog cleric.  Zaber started methodically searching all the walls for secret doors, and found one.

But while that was happening, somehow Elias got lost and wandered outside the room, and ran into a wandering monster.  It was a human-sized skeleton of a dragon, and it tried to kill him, while he tried to kill it.  The other PCs heard the commotion and tried to come to Elias's aid, but he was several seconds of running to the west, and by the time they got there, Elias had destroyed the skeleton, with two solid hits.  (Its bones appeared rather brittle and vulnerable to crushing damage, and he had a flail.)  The party started trying to loot broken draconic skeleton bones, but they seemed pretty crushed and worthless.

Zaber encouraged everyone to stop smashing stupid bones and come with him to the secret door, and they eventually did.  On the other side of the secret door was a narrow, hot, humid passage, which opened into a huge cave.  The cave contained a big pile of hot rocks, and big broken cage, and a red dragon.  (Invisible) Zaber and Polly and Elias were all next to each other, and the dragon ran up and breathed a cone of fire at Polly that happened to also threaten the other two.  Fortunately for them, the dragon missed, and the cone went in a direction where no PCs were standing.

Polly responded by firing a couple of bodkin arrows at the dragon's skull, and it only dodged one of them.  Invisible Zaber started moving into an ambush position, the others moved up, and the dragon breathed fire again, this time in the direction of Elias and Zaber.  Both managed to jump out of the way.

Polly kept shooting bodkins at the dragon's skull, but this time one missed and the dragon dodged the other.  Garreth charged forward and tried taunting the dragon, but this had no effect even though he rolled a 4!  Elias took a swing at the dragon's snout (all that was within reach), but the dragon retreated and dodged.  Seépravir started casting Death Vision, which takes 2 turns to cast.

The dragon breathed a third cone of fire, this time at Polly, Garreth, and Seépravir.  All three dodged, and Seépravir even managed not to mess up her concentration on the spell in progress.  Polly fired two more bodkins, and this time the dragon decided to Drop and Dodge.  It dodged one, but the second slammed into its skull.  Garreth ran up and Rapid Struck the dragon twice, and it failed to dodge either, and the dragon was very badly wounded, but still alive.

Seépravir stopped maintaining a bunch of spells (Dark Vision, Keen Vision, Mage Stealth, Invisibility) to reduce her penalty, then cast Death Vision on the dragon, mentally stunning it with no resistance roll.  (She initially rolled an 18 which would have been a nasty critical failure, but her Luck had recharged, so it worked.)  The dragon's turn came immediately after, and it recovered from mental stun, but that cost it its turn, so it didn't get to breathe fire or try to escape.

Polly put two more bodkins into the dragon's skull, resulting in another death check, which the (very resilient) dragon passed.  Garreth smashed his katana into the dragon's skull twice more, resulting in another passed death check.  Finally, Zaber ran up and All-Out attacked the dragon's eye.  This hit, resulting in a brain shot, and enough damage to bring the dragon past -5 * HT, where it didn't get to roll any more death checks.  (This particular dragon didn't have a Nictitating Membrane over its eyes, though some do.)

There was a pile of coins inside the broken cage, so Zaber went over to investigate.  In addition to the coins, he found some jade strings, a long knife, a silver scroll case, and some gems.  Garreth and Seépravir also searched the pile, and found a couple more gems.  The scroll cast contained a scroll written in Dwarf.  Zaber reads Dwarf (not very well), and figured out it was 3 wizard spells.  The jade strings were magical and Seépravir suspected they were part of the harp they needed to help free the air elemental.  Zaber and Garreth checked out the knife, and decided it was fine and balanced, a pretty nice weapon.

The hot rocks contained a bunch of eggs.  Seépravir took a close look and decided they were probably troglodytes.  With the obvious treasure found, the group decided it was time to harvest dragon bits.  Polly used Garreth's penetrating Katana to remove as much dragon hide as she thought they could fit in their wheelbarrows, and Seépravir extracted a gland from the dragon's throat that she thought might have something to do with fire breath.

They searched the dragon's room for secret doors, didn't find any, and considered heading home.  But they had some time left, and decided to instead explore more of the maze of tunnels where Polly had earlier been attacked by a "ceiling snake" that came out of a hole in the wall.  Invisible Zaber took the lead, with Polly right behind him, and once again a cave moray surprised Polly and bit her from behind.  It was a pretty solid bite, enough that she needed to make consciousness checks.  After some discussion on whether Bless would prevent that attack (it didn't because Polly didn't get a defense roll because it was a surprise back attack), everyone started recovering from surprise.

Zaber moved closer, then the Cave Moray attacked him, despite his Invisibility, but he critically succeeded on his dodge and it lost its balance.  Polly stayed conscious, then drilled the moray with impaling arrows twice at close range.  It tried retreating into its hole, then lost consciousness from the arrow wounds, and Garreth stepped up to cut it into pieces, then pulled the pieces out of the hole and looked for treasure.  Unfortunately there wasn't any.

Elias cast Stop Bleeding on Polly, and rolled a rolled a 3, a critical success.  I ruled that it healed 4 HP instead of the usual 1-3.  That was enough to get Polly out of the passing out range, and also out of the reduced Move range.  Everyone then packed up the loot, fetched Hugin and Katanya and their wheelbarrow, and headed home.

GM's Comments:

The spider's ambush was foiled by Zaber rolling a crit on the Perception roll I gave him to detect the pit.  The spider then got mad that Elias was burning its webs, and tried to pounce on Seépravir.  It probably would have been better tactics to Web some people first.  But one spider, even a really big one, was no match for this party.

Elias getting lost and having to fight the skeletal wyrmling solo was mostly a Roll20 fail.  Our group has a hard time keeping their tokens together.  I've decided that if they give a strict instruction like "ignore where I move my token; I'm always next to Garreth" then that works.  (Unless they put their token somewhere unexplored and reveal something new, in which case they're there.)  Otherwise, if you move your token randomly down the hall, your character is wandering randomly down the hall.  This was the first wandering monster I'd rolled in a long time.  (I roll pretty often, but the likelihood per short time period is usually pretty low, and I always fail to roll low.)

The dragon was supposed to be tough, but the combination of good dodges and attacks to the skull and eyes took it out.  I deliberately had it fight from the ground instead of the air because it was a small dragon who'd lived in a cage most of its life and had never had to fight anything tough before.  If it had stayed out of melee range and concentrated its fire on Polly, it might have done better.  Amusingly, Polly and Garreth beat it to within a few HP of automatic death, then Zaber stabbed it in the eye to get the glory.  (If it had had Nictitating Membrane it might have survived that eye stab and lived a fraction of a turn longer, but one more arrow or katana slash would have finished it anyway.)

The "ceiling snake" that was probably the wimpiest monster they fought all session did the most damage, thanks to ambush.

Next week: a new player joins the party.  We'll see if they manage to break into the Clockwork Academy, or get stuck fighting more Ceiling Snakes.

DF Whiterock Session 19: Invisible Flying Alpha Strike

Date:

2018-09-07

Weather:

Warm, Overcast

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 194 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 239 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 227 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 215 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 249 points

Significant NPCs:

Cookie, Ogre Bouncer

Lord Granger Flitwich, Human Noble

Katanya Glimer, Gnome Sorceress

Hugin, Human Guard

Aeraelith, Air Elemental
Draconic Troglodyte Priest
7 Troglodyte Zombies


As usual, Elias visited the temple of Justicia, and as usual they had no holy warriors for him.  They were all off smiting evil in the Warlands.  He informed the priest that he had gone ahead and exorcised their temple for them, which made them happy.  He tried to hire Cookie the ogre to carry large objects, but Cookie was too busy working in the Inn of the Slumbering Drake as a bouncer.

The party (minus Polly who was off in the woods) thought they needed a gnome to help them open the door to the Clockwork Academy, so they went to visit Katanya, who they had rescued from orcs.  She was still a bit unnerved by her experienced, but agreed to go along and be gnomish.  They also hired Hugin, a caravan guard who they'd also rescued from orcs, to guard her.  Hugin had some bad news: their mutual friend Bernard had been killed defending a caravan from bandits.

Ibizaber, still annoyed at Lord Flitwick, got Seépravir to cast Invisibility and Mage-Stealth and then went to case his house.  Nobody was home, so he broke in and searched for anything of interest.  He found a lot of nice clothes and some art (including a statue of a little boy that was a bit too realistic for comfort) and some documents indicating that he was off visiting his tailor in the capital Galeron, but nothing very interesting.

Seépravir did some research on the town of Mystenmere and found that it was to the north, near the Anseur Forest, and that elves and wizards lived there.

Eventually the group got bored snooping around town and decided to hike to the dungeon.  They had Hugin push the wheelbarrow, since they were paying him.  Seépravir cast Dark Vision on all the PCs, Lighten Burden on Elias, and Invisibility/Mage-Stealth/Alertness/Keen Vision/Keen Hearing on Ibizaber.  They went down three levels, to the room with the flowstone organ, imprisoned air elemental, and possible secret entrance to the Clockwork Academy.  Aeraelith wanted to talk, so Elias cast Gift of Tongues and told him that they hadn't found the other two musical instruments needed to rescue him yet.

Katanya checked out the door that the party hadn't been able to open.  It turned out that there was an illusionary wall that she was able to walk through, and beyond that was an iron door with a very high-quality lock, an icon involving gears, and some signs in Gnome.  One sign said "Forward progress one gear at a time" and the other said "Advanced Studies Wing."  Katanya tried to pick the lock, but failed.  Ibizaber then tried, and also failed.  The group then pulled out their collection of keys and tried all of them, which also failed.  Katanya indicated there was some kind of enchantment on the door and walls, probably to stop annoying earth mages from just tunneling through.  And Seépravir tried casting a spell on the lock, which failed, indicating it was probably made of meteoric iron.  With no way through, Katanya's work was done.  Ibizaber considered finding some better lockpicks, and Elias figured they needed to find the key.

With the door checked out, the next task was exploring more of the level.  So Seépravir made Elias Invisible to make his Flaming Weapon spell invisible, and the four PCs (Polly still hadn't caught up) went exploring for new troglodytes to kill.  They went through the big room with the noncombatant troglodytes, who ran when they saw Garreth.  Then Ibizaber continued down an unexplored passage to the west, which led to a huge room.  The room contained a ledge around the outside, a depression in the middle, a large statue of a dragon on the far side, a pit in front of the statue, and a pillar in the center of the room.  On the pillar was some kind of odd draconic troglodyte priest leading some kind of religious ceremony, and on the floor were a bunch of zombie troglodytes dancing.  The two invisible PCs watched for a while, undetected, then went back to get their friends.

Seépravir made herself and Garreth Invisible as well, and then they snuck along the ledges to the outside of the room, in ambush position.  The plan was that Seépravir would Levitate Garreth over to the pillar where the priest was, while Elias shot the priest in the head with his crossbow.

The plan worked pretty well.  Elias used Divine Grace to raise his dexterity, then used Luck when he didn't like his roll, then shot the priest in the skull with his crossbow (he would have gone for the eye but the priest was facing the wrong way) and injured him badly.  Then Garreth floated over and did some katana rapid strikes while invisible, and the priest went down without a fight.  Operation invisible flying alpha strike was a success.  Meanwhile Ibizaber got into position to backstab any zombies that ran up to attack Elias. 

Right about then Polly showed up in the dungeon, a bit outside the room where the fight had just started, and ran at top speed to try to get to the fight before it was over.

The seven troglodyte zombies did their best to avenge their leader, but it wasn't much of a fight.  Polly shot a couple with her bow, Seépravir Levitated Garreth back over from the pillar so he could cut them up, and Elias started bashing them with his flail.  The zombies didn't have any weapons besides their claws.  One of them landed a hit on Elias (critical hit, and he had already used his Luck in the last hour), but he was armored enough that it didn't hurt much.  Seépravir cast Grease under the last four zombies to penalize their defenses and movement, and there was some slipping and sliding and (re-)dying, and then there were no zombies left.

Zaber went over to the statue to check it out.  It had 7 teeth made of some kind of black gem, which he took.  The deep pit in front of the statue looked worth investigating, so he climbed down and started searching through all the remains of various sacrifice victims, finding two large red gems that had been the statue's eyes.  Then he climbed back up and tried putting the eyes back to make something happen, but nothing happened, so he re-burglarized the gems.

Seépravir Levitated herself over to the dead priest's pillar to loot his body.  He had a pretty valuable-looking holy symbol of some dragon god, an enchanted spear-thrower, a potion, and a mace.  She then kicked his body off the pillar, which was harder than expected because the dragon-trog-priest was a really big guy, and Seépravir is a rather small elf, but she made her Strength roll and knocked him down.  Splat!  That was a good move because it made it easy for Garreth to also search the priest, and he found a key that Seépravir had somehow missed.

With all the obvious loot looted, Elias started wandering around the room, and found a secret door.  He and Ibizaber wandered in, and found some webs.  He reached out with his Flaming Flail to burn the webs, and a huge spider rolled for surprise, and that's where the session ended.  (We only had about 25 minutes left, and I didn't think there was any way to finish another fight in that time, so I just stopped the session there so we could resume next week.)

Just how big is the spider?  How much trouble are Ibizaber and Elias in for wandering away from the others?  Tune in next week to find out.


GM's Comments:

The plan to get Katanya to help with the Clockwork Academy door was a pretty good one, as she's pretty talented and can also read Gnome.  But neither she nor Ibizaber could pick the super-fancy lock.  I told the players that it was a one-try-per-picker lock, unless you come back with higher skill or better lockpicks.  So we'll see if they can pick it next time, or if they need to find the key.

Good magically-aided stealth plus good tactics plus a priest too busy with his ceremony to watch his back made the battle against the dragon-troglodyte priest a total joke.  Surprise in GURPS is nasty, and the combination of Elias's over-strength crossbow and Garreth's rapid strikes to the skull did brutal amounts of damage.  In hindsight I probably should have given that priest some unfair advantages like a Bless spell of his own to give him a fighting chance to survive long enough to fight back.

The secret door leading to the spider was a little to easy for the players to find, because I forgot to put a visibility blocking line in Roll20's dynamic lighting layer.  Doesn't matter though, because Elias rolled a critical success on his Perception roll and would have found it the "right" way anyway.

DF Whiterock Session 18: The Net

Date:

2018-08-31

Weather:

Warm, Overcast

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 189 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 234 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 222 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 210 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 244 points

Significant NPCs:

10 Troglodyte warriors

One Troglodyte leader

Some kind of cave eel

The group spent a week in town, resting and training and looking for information and equipment.  Garreth found a very fine knife for Ibizaber.  Seépravir went looking for more dirt on Lord Granger Flitwick, and found that his uncle had fathered a child with an unidentified elf from Mystenmere.  Ibizaber heard a rumor about goblins on the move, trespassing on a farmer's property.  Garreth heard that giving Ixnay the shoulder dragon your first drink of the night was good luck.  Elias once again tried to find clerics interesting in exorcising the tainted altar to Justicia, and once again failed.

They met up at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake to compare notes, then decided to hike to Castle Whiterock to try to exorcise that altar themselves, then explore more of the troglodyte level.

Seépravir decided to only cast Dark Vision on herself and Ibizaber and Polly this time, making Garreth and Elias rely on Continual Light.   Zaber also got Alertness, Keen Vision, Keen Hearing, Invisibility, and Mage Stealth.  He scouted the path to the altar, and found no enemies.

Elias used his newly learned Exorcism on the altar to Justicia, using his high holy symbol and a couple of vials of holy water to try to improve the odds.   It appeared to work.  He thought he saw a glow and heard a voice asking him to smite orcs and demons, but wasn't sure.

The group then headed downstairs to the room with the flowstone organ, where Elias cast Gift of Tongues to be able to communicate with whatever was trapped inside the organ.  It turned out to be some kind of air elemental named Aeraelith, who had been imprisoned there by an elf named Lyria, and wanted out.  To break the spell required finding some music inside the organ's bench, then having three musicians play it correctly on the three jade Sorrowsong Instruments: a flute, a drum, and a harp.  Elias asked about the door to the east, and the creature said he thought it was the entrance to the Clockwork Academy, and a lot of gnomes used to go that way, but not in many many years.

With this hint, the group started trying to open the bench.  Ibizaber found a secret compartment, but couldn't figure out how to open it.  Seépravir tried Apportation, which failed.  Zaber eventually found a tiny hair inside the crack of the compartment, and managed to wedge his knife in there and open it.  Inside were three stone tablets, with some inlaid jade musical notes in Elvish notation.  Seépravir tried playing one of the songs on the jade flute, but it had no effect.

After some Lend Energy and some resting, Ibizaber started scouting ahead again.  Polly followed him, despite not being invisible or silent.  When Polly entered the big troglodyte cave, some noncombatant troglodytes saw her and ran away.  Zaber took the passage to the south, then the west, and found a room containing a troglodyte, a pile of mushrooms, and a bunch of spells.  He decided to go back for the others rather than start a fight.

Meanwhile, Garreth tried to bash down the door to the Clockwork Academy, using Elias's flail, but it had no effect.  The door wasn't budging and he didn't appear to do any damage to it.  Seépravir said there was some magic on the door.  They decided to try again some other time, maybe with a gnome.

Polly went wandering off to the south, through some twisty little passages, and got ambushed by some kind of large cave eel, sticking its head out of a hole in the rock.  She acrobatically dodged, and then filled it with a couple of arrows.  It retreated back into a hole in the rock, where they couldn't get it.  At that point Zaber and Polly went back to rejoin the group.

The group snuck over to the lone troglodyte that Zaber had found.  They tried to ambush him, but failed.  He had leather armor and a big club and a javelin and a bad smell.  Polly shot him with an arrow, and he threw his javelin at Polly but she dodged it (needing Luck).  Polly shot him several more times and he fell over, and then Garreth stabbed him in the eye.  The club had shiny purple studs on it, which looked valuable.  The skulls and mushrooms turned out to not be very interesting, but Zaber found a secret compartment, containing a spellbook and a (magical) Elven mail shirt and a fine bastard sword.  And the troglodyte's (very stinky) leather armor was also magical.  Quite a haul for a troglodyte.

After some rest, the group continued to the south, with still-Invisible Ibizaber a bit ahead.  And then a giant net, that he'd somehow missed, fell on their heads.  Ibizaber in front and Seépravir in back were at the edges of the net and both managed to dodge out of the way, but the other three were trapped.  And then ten troglodytes with clubs and javelins attacked from ambush.

Zaber started trying to find a good ambush position.  Garreth pulled out a knife and started sawing at the net.   Polly pulled out a cutting arrow and started sawing, but it didn't work very well.  Seépravir was nauseated by the troglodytes' stench, but still managed to throw up a Smoke spell to block the troglodytes' line of sight while her allies tried to get out of the net.  Elias used his Divine Grace to improve his dexterity before trying to wiggle out of the net.

Polly figured out that wiggling out of the net was more effective for her than cutting it.  Elias, who didn't carry a sharp weapon, did that too.  Garreth, after cutting up the net for a while, eventually decided to stop doing that and just wiggle out.  It took a few seconds, but eventually all of them were free, and Polly started moving around the smoke to try to shoot some troglodytes.

Then Seépravir dropped the Smoke, intending to cast another Smoke in a better place.  But all the troglodytes were waiting for any sign of a visible enemy, and ten javelins flew.  Fortunately for the PCs, there's a penalty for Opportunity Fire, and the troglodytes were not great marks, er, beings, so they all missed.  (One rolled a critical hit on Polly, but she spoiled it with Luck.)  Seépravir needed Luck as well go get her new Smoke where she wanted it, blocking line of sight to the troglodytes to the west while allowing seeing the ones to the south.

Polly tried shooting a troglodyte, which dodged, but then the arrow hit and killed the one behind him.  Garreth ran up and killed one with his katana.  Elias ran through the smoke to attack one-on-four against the western troglodytes, and shield rushed one to the ground.  The other three ganged up on him for a second, but he blocked and parried and dodged and then flailed them in the skull.  Meanwhile, Polly and Garreth started rapidly killing the others.  Without the net, ten troglodytes versus five PCs turned out to be not enough troglodytes.

We were out of time, so the group looted the troglodyte bodies and headed back to town.

GM's Comments:

Boss monsters should stay close to their troops.  The boss troglodyte enjoyed his private cave with his mushroom bed and skull decor a bit too much, and so had to fight separately from his minions, which got him killed.  If those two battles could have been combined, it would have been a bit harder for the PCs.

Smoke was a very effective fight-slower to give 3 PCs time to get out of the net.

Gift of Tongues is a really great spell, when you need to speak to someone who only speaks some silly language that no PC would ever take.  Now the PCs think they need to find two more jade instruments to free Aeraelith, and they think they need a gnome to open the door to the Clockwork Academy.