2018-10-02

DF Whiterock Session 22: Digging a Hole

Date:

2018-09-28

Weather:

Mild, party cloudy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 209 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 254 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 242 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 228 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 264 points

Significant NPCs:

Lord Granger Flitwick, Human Noble
Quintus, Human Alchemist
Alrux, Dwarf Armorer
3 Shocker Lizards


The PCs spent a week in town, training and drinking and shopping and looking for information.  Zaber spied on Lord Flitwick some more, and found that he was back in town.  Zaber and Garreth both failed to hear any interesting new rumors.

Seépravir researched the Clockwork Academy and found that it was a gnomish institution of learning about mechanical things, founded by Ergus Silverheel about 600 years ago, that it produced golems including combat golems, and that it was believed destroyed by orcs and dragons and cloud giants. 

Garreth took some dragon hide to Alrux the armorer, to see if he wanted to buy them or could make armor out of them.  Alrux was impressed and low-fived Garreth for killing a baby dragon, but explained that he'd never actually made dragon hide armor before, so it would be a risk.  Garreth didn't make a final decision and said he had to talk it over with his friends.

Quintus the alchemist wasn't very interested in dragon scales, but bought a dragon gizzard, raising his offer when he remembered how rich Elias was.

Polly gave some hard carrot juice to Ixnay the shoulder dragon, who liked it and then went back to sleep.

After running out of fun things to do in town, the party hiked to Castle Whiterock.  Once again they dodged any random encounters on the way to the castle, cast a few spells, then headed down a few levels to the Clockwork Academy.  After some brief discussion, they decided to eradicate the Shocker Lizards that had almost killed Polly.  Unfortunately, the vertical shaft leading down to the lizards was still incredibly narrow, and nobody except Polly fit in it.  (Zaber, who actually has Escape skill, tried but failed.)  There was some discussion of using the Grease spell to squeeze someone down it, which sounded like a bad idea.  Fortunately, Seépravir has the Shape Earth spell, so the topography of the dungeon is somewhat negotiable.  She started widening the shaft to the point that one person could easily fit.  Then she cast Levitate and floated down as she kept casting Shape Earth, to avoid range penalties.

When she was done digging, she flew back up to the top.  Zaber, who happened to be Invisible, went down first.  Then Garreth.  Zaber opened the door into the storeroom containing shocker lizards.  They didn't see him, but they saw Garreth, so a fight started.  With Elias, Polly, and Seépravir still at the top of the shaft.  Polly doesn't like being left out of a fight, so she decided to jump.  Fortunately she has Acrobatics, and made her roll, subtracting 5 yards of falling damage.  Unfortunately, the shaft was 7 yards deep, so she still made a rough landing.  Fortunately, she landed on Garreth so he took some of the damage.  And both were kind of prone.  (The shaft was too narrow to go fully prone, but I figured it was close enough.)

Nobody was surprised, and all three lizards ran past invisible Zaber and tried to zap Garreth and Polly.  The first one almost hit Polly pretty hard (she failed to evade with the posture penalty) until the Bless spell on her averted it and was used up.  Garreth made his DX roll to evade and his armor avoided the small amount of remaining damage.  The second lizard missed.  The third lizard again failed to hurt Garreth through his armor, but did more shock damage to Polly.  She was slowed by her wounds, and needed to roll each turn to remain conscious.

Seépravir decided to use her Levitation to take two turns to reach the bottom of the shaft, one second falling at 5 yards/second and then one second making a controlled landing at the moderate 3 yards/second that Levitate allows.  Elias, lacking any means of flight or even skilled Climbing, stayed at the top and yelled encouragement.

Heroic Archers can shoot with no penalties for posture, so Polly decided not to waste time changing positions, and that it was time to start shooting lizards.  But the shock penalty for the combination of falling and electrical damage on the previous turn took her Fast-Draw(Arrow) below the level where her No Nuisance Rolls perk applied, and so she actually had to roll her Fast-Draw, and she rolled a 15 and dropped an arrow.  Oops.  She then took a one-hex Step (described as "flopping like a fish") while prone to get out of the way.

Garreth finished standing up, and then took a Rapid Strike double katana chop at the nearest lizard, with some Deceptive Attack added for fun.  The lizard failed its first Dodge, was injured seriously enough to have its move and dodge halved, missed its second Dodge as a result, and died.  Shocker Lizards are glass cannons -- nice electrical attacks but not a lot of staying power.

In response, the two surviving Shocker Lizards started their combo interpretive dance to make a big multi-hex ball of lightning attack.  It was big enough to hit Zaber, Garreth, and Polly.  It hurt Zaber badly, Garreth a little, and Polly (already badly injured) badly.  Polly made her death check, happy that she had put points into HT and Fit.

Seépravir was still 2 yards off the floor, which was too high to see the lizards through the door.  So she cast Smoke to ruin everyone's vision.  Invisible Zaber was in the Smoke area, and had to close his eyes and hold his breath to avoid negative effects.  The lizards were also surrounded by Smoke, and (unknown to the party) ran away to get out of it.  (I took their tokens off the map since nobody could see them.  I guess I could have used Roll20's line of sight features instead to make the Smoke opaque.)

Polly managed to stay conscious, fast-drew an arrow, but failed (with the penalty for shock) to automatically quick-ready her bow, and spent a whole second drawing it, like a farmer.  Zaber kept his eyes shut and chose All-Out Defend (Dodge).  Fortunately for him, the lizards were repositioning themselves outside of the scary Smoke, rather than shocking people.  Seépravir dismissed her Smoke to get a quick look at where the lizards were, spotted one of them, then quickly re-cast Smoke in a different place.  Garreth had been waiting for a lizard to come in katana range, but none did, so he didn't do anything.

Polly took advantage of the quick glance at one lizard's position to loose a couple of arrows at it.  (With the shock penalty gone, she was back to Fast-Draw 16+ and Bow 16+ so her No Nuisance Rolls perk was working again and she only had to roll to hit with her arrows.)  I ruled that since the Smoke had just disappeared for a second and given her a clear look, she knew where the target was, but since new Smoke was blocking her line of sight, she had a -4 to hit it.  With that penalty, only one of her two shots hit.  Of course the lack of line of sight works both ways, and I had to decide whether to give the lizard a chance to Dodge.  I gave it a hearing roll, which it failed, so no Dodge, and it took a pretty solid hit from an impaling arrow.

Garreth decided to charge forward, not knowing that Invisible Zaber was in his path.  Zaber Dodged the accidental friendly Slam, and ran up to where he saw the remaining lizard, hiding behind some big shelves.  The lizard stepped forward to zap Garreth, and rolled a 17.  Critical failure, lost balance, -2 to defenses.  The other lizard, which Polly had just shot, passed out.

Seépravir moved forward, Polly (still prone) flopped forward a bit to try to get a shot at the remaining lizard, Zaber hid behind a table, and Garreth decided to chop the off-balance lizard in half, twice.  The combination of the -2 off-balance penalty and -2 for Deceptive Attack were enough to cause the lizard to fail its first Dodge, and it was injured badly but not killed.  Then the second strike came in, with the lizard's Dodge lowered more by its wounds, and it died.

With the fight over, Seépravir Levitated up to the top of the shaft, cast Levitate on Elias, and lowered both of them back down.  The lizards' lair was a storeroom, with lots of shelves and also a few hatches on the walls.  With Polly badly injured and Zaber somewhat injured, there were some Stop Bleeding spells and then some Major Healing spells and then some Lend Energy from Seépravir to help Elias recover from casting all those spells.  Polly recovered some arrows and then noticed a big bug running across the floor.  She didn't want to hurt it because of her reverence for Nature.  And then Seépravir started cutting up lizards for potentially valuable electrical glands (these PCs don't waste any part of their enemies that might be worth cash), while Zaber started searching the shelves.

On the shelves, Zaber found a crowbar and some flint and steel.  Then another bug skittered across the floor and the PCs had an overreaction contest, with Seépravir casting Death Vision on it while Garreth threw a knife at it.  Polly complained about being mean to wildlife, while Seépravir put the bug in a vial along with lizard bits.

Behind a hatch to the east was a small tunnel, which soon ended in collapse.  Zaber kept searching shelves, and found a very high quality lock.  And then a tube with glass on both ends, which the PCs looked through for a few minutes, watching things get bigger and smaller.  Polly decided to search too, and found a key, which fit the lock.  Zaber opened a hatch to the north, and found a vertical shaft totally full of rubble.  There were two other rubble-filled hatches to the west, which seemed to match rubble-filled hatches they'd seen from above, but the one to the north appeared new and interesting, so it was time for Dungeon Civil Engineering, Phase Two.

We then went through a long slow process of Seépravir casting Shape Earth to widen the shaft and clear out some rubble, then Levitating up, and repeating.  A lot of times.  The fourth or fifth time I rolled for unstable tunnel collapse, I rolled a 17, and a bunch of rubble fell on Seépravir.  But she had a Bless spell up, so all this did was knock her Bless off and prevent any actual smooshing.  She had Elias re-cast Bless and resumed digging up.  She eventually made it all the way to the surface, about 100 feet up, and the party had a new entrance to the dungeon.  (Unfortunately they didn't have a 100' ladder or even 100' of rope, but they made plans to acquire such things.)  Seépravir tried to camouflage the top of the hole, then went back down to her rather bored companions, who had finished searching the room and were waiting to resume exploring.

Seépravir cast Seek Magic and saw a vision of a door, up and southwest.  So everyone climbed or Levitated back up to the main Clockwork Academy level,  until they were all in front of a closed door near the front entrance.  Zaber searched for traps, didn't find any, listened, didn't hear anything, and opened the door.  BOOMExplosive Fireball trap.  Zaber made his DX roll for half damage, but it was a big Fireball, and half was plenty to knock his Bless off.   Polly and Seépravir also took a bit of fire damage, but they were far enough back that it wasn't much.

Elias remembered to drop the Bless on Bojack (who wasn't in the castle, having been called to some ceremony at the temple of Danethar), then recast Bless on Zaber.  Behind the trapped door was a long, narrow, low hallway, with 7 doors on the sides and end.  Seépravir recast Seek Magic and found magic on the door at the end of the hallway.  Zaber checked it for traps and was pretty sure there was some kind of magic trap on it.  Elias cast Resist Fire on him, just in case it was another Fireball, and then Zaber decided to pick the lock but not open the door, instead letting Seépravir Apportate it open from a safe distance.  He made his Lockpicking roll and backed away.

Seépravir magicked it open, revealing a hemispherical room with formerly nice but decayed furniture.  The far wall had some carvings of some crazy clockwork gadget, and Zaber (with the combo of Alertness and See Secrets raising his senses to ridiculous levels) immediately spotted a secret door behind it.  He touched it to open it, and some magic trap tried to kill him, but he made his HT roll and didn't die.  The secret door swung open...

...And we were out of time so I stopped things there rather than describing what was behind the door.  We'll find out next week.

GM's Comments:

Only one fight this week, against the shocker lizards that almost killed Polly last week.  It was a long fight because of elevation differences, and narrow shafts that needed widening, and Smoke blocking line of sight, and Polly being too injured to murder enemies at her usual velocity.  But the PCs won handily, though with a couple of bad scares, Polly needing to make a death check and Zaber being knocked within a couple of HP of needing to roll consciousness checks.

The players spent some time playing with the lock and spyglass and bugs they found, proof that any weird treasure is fun.  Seépravir spent a lot of time digging a new entrance chimney, which means that the Clockwork Academy is now eligible for visits from Santa.

The MVP of the session was Elias's Bless collection.  Saved Polly, Seépravir, and Zaber once each.  That spell is so broken, especially if there's ample time to cast it again after it does its duty, as there was this time.

The hallway of trapped doors was a different kind of challenge, as there haven't been a lot of effective traps in Castle Whiterock so far.  The 9d Explosive Fireball was nasty, and then the resist-or-die trap was even nastier, but the combo of Luck and Bless means that there wasn't really much danger.  Defeating this party means hitting them with multiple lethal threats faster than they can replenish their supernatural cheat codes.

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