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
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.
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.
I genuinely felt bad about how fast we killed that boss.
ReplyDeleteI find interesting that the best playthroughs I read are yours and Peter Dell'Orto's at Dungeon Fantastic, both GURPS games. Maybe it's because the system is very good, and I can understand how and why each character pulled a certain move. Other playtroughs, specially in the OSR sphere, either are super boring with very limited characters, or are played by ultra-cool gamers that pull off crazy shenanigans that somehow feel made-up.
ReplyDeleteThanks Thiago. I'm a big fan of Peter's site too.
ReplyDeleteThe super entertaining recaps plus the desire to play alongside known cool people like zuljita and Archon Shiva are what made me throw my hat onto the waiting list
ReplyDelete