DF Whiterock 28: Trogs and Frogs

Date:

2018-11-23

Weather:

Freezing, snowy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 235 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 272 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 256 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 294 points

Significant NPCs:

Lady Chuntessa, Innkeeper and Historian
Elder Brother Sampson, Cleric of Elyr
Tyber Lasir, Half-Elf Arms Dealer
3 Giant Miner Stonebore Ants
3 Bat Swarms
2 Frog-Trainer Troglodytes
6 Giant Demon Frogs or Possibly Toads
1 Huge Troglodyte-Frog-Toad-Demon Boss
Carlia, Human Farmer-Prisoner
Jath, Human Child-Prisoner


The cold snowy weather weather continued in Cillamar.  Winter is here in the northlands.

Elias went to Elder Brother Sampson to report the lich sighting and ask for paladins to help eradicate the presumably evil undead.  Sampson told Elias that all the Holy Warriors were still stuck in the Warlands, probably for the rest of winter.

Tyber Lasir told Polly that he had heard there might be an excellent elven longbow available in the capital Galaron, and Polly placed an order and paid half the price in advance.  Of course not many caravans move in the winter, so delivery might take a while.

Lady Chauntessa, having heard crazy rumors of the group's encounter with a lich's library, delivered a note to Seépravir saying that she would pay dearly for information about the secret Sleep of Ages spell.

Zaber went looking for his nemesis Lord Granger Flitwick again, but the lord was still out of town.  Rumor said he was spending the winter somewhere to the south.

Garreth was nowhere to be found.  Neither was Hugin.  So the four remaining adventurers gathered their warm winter clothes and/or Warmth spells, and started trudging through the snow toward Castle Whiterock.  They made awful time, but fortunately none of the creatures that prey on travellers wanted to be out in the winter either, so they made it to Lake Whiterock unscathed.  At that point they had to choose between walking across the frozen lake or around it.  Seépravir and Polly both thought they remembered an elven nursery rhyme that said that walking across lakes before December would result in falling through thin ice and freezing to death and being eaten by fish, so they went around.

Once they reached Castle Whiterock, the group decided to immediately go downstairs, where it might be warmer.  They made it down to the cave where they'd killed the queen ant, because Polly thought the queen ant's head might be worth money.  But the queen's corpse was gone.  Whether it had been carried away respectfully by her surviving ant subjects, or eaten by random scavengers, nobody was sure.

Zaber noticed a suspicious stone in the ant cave, about 15 feet up.  He and Polly climbed up the slippery walls, and found that it was indeed blocking a passage, but was hard to move.  Seépravir threw a few Earth to Air spells under the rock, loosening its perch on a ledge, and it crashed to the floor with a mighty boom.  While she was resting to recover from the exertion of casting the spells, a couple of giant ants showed up to investigate, but they immediately ran away when they saw the intruders, and the group decided not to chase them.

Seépravir Levitated herself and Elias up to the newly discovered passage, and the group walked north until they saw a large cave, featuring an underground stream, some giant ants, and a whole lot of bats.  Both the ants and several swarms of bats charged at the intruders.  Polly started shooting the onrushing bat swarms with cutting arrows, but each arrow only took out a few bats, so the swarms continued.  One of the swarms attacked Zaber, but didn't manage to bite though his light armor.  Seépravir dropped some smoke, which slowed down the bats, but they eventually came through it, and one swarm bit her pretty badly.

With no bat swarms in line of sight, Polly shot a giant ant instead, and knocked it out.  One of the bat swarms reached Elias, but failed to bite through his heavy armor.  Elias started smacking the swarms with both his Flaming flail and his shield, killing or chasing away many bats.  Zaber stabbed a few bats as well with his knife, and then Seépravir cast Create Fire on the last swarm of bats and burned them away.  The last surviving giant ant ran away -- apparently these ants were not as brave as the previous groups.

With the ants and bats gone, Zaber wanted to explore the stream, so he asked Seépravir for a Warmth spell and the Ring of Water Breathing.  Seépravir cheerfully cast the spell, reluctantly lent him the ring, and Zaber went for a dunk.  The stream was pretty boring though -- no monsters, no treasure, and it narrowed pretty soon, in both directions.

Elias cast Stop Bleeding to partially heal Seépravir's bat bites, and then the group continued exploring to the east.  They found a lot of empty passages, and moved another big rocks, before Elias (working with only the limited light radius of his Flaming flail, rather than Dark Vision like everyone else) blundered away from the group.  First he found a passage leading down to another level, and then he found a giant cave containing a stream and also some troglodytes and giant demon frogs.

The group eventually got back together, in time to face the trogs and frogs.  The trogs unleashed the usual stench attack, and Zaber was nauseated (-2 to DX, -1 to defenses), but not actually retching.  Then the trogs started encouraging the frogs to attack the PCs, while Polly started shooting arrows.

Polly's first arrow was critically dodged by a trog, but there was a frog right behind the trog, and she scored a lucky hit on it.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on Polly, increasing her rate of fire from a ridiculous 2 arrows per second to a downright stupid 4 arrows per second.  Elias waded in with flail and shield and did some blocking and some bashing.  Zaber threw a knife at a trog and critically hit it for moderate damage.  Zaber also heard a human woman screaming in Common to the north, but didn't have time to go that way yet.

While Polly kept shooting things, Elias smacked a stunned trog twice with his Flaming flail and killed it.  Seépravir put a Great Haste on Zaber too.  The last badly wounded frog passed out, and then the group turned their attention to the screams to the north. 

Getting to the north required crossing a stream.  Polly and Zaber and Elias all jumped over it.  Seépravir Levitated instead.  Eventually they all reached a cave, where three more demon frogs were menacing a woman and a child.  That meant they were facing the wrong way, so Polly started shooting them in the back.  She took down two, Zaber killed the third one with his knife, and then the two humans were safe from being eaten, at least temporarily.  But before the group could rest, the woman yelled to Polly to look out for the big one behind her.

In the stream to the north, there was a huge troglodyte-frog-demon-something, about twelve feet tall.  Polly ran around a bit to get a clear shot, then fired some arrows at it, but it dodged and dove under the water, making it much harder to hit.  Seépravir cast another Great Haste on Polly, who had used her 10 seconds of super speed.  The huge thing advanced underwater, while Polly plugged it with mostly ineffective shots.  (-4 to hit and half damage due to water, plus the creature had a lot of DR and a lot of dodge and also regenerated.)  Eventually the frog thing reached the edge of the water closest to the party, then popped up and threw an ice ball at Zaber.  He failed to dodge it, used his Luck, failed to dodge it twice more, and got smacked for 11 points of cold damage, enough to force his Bless spell to save him.  The Bless was gone, but Zaber was miraculously unscathed.

Next, the creature jumped out of the water at Elias and attacked him with its huge tongue, but he managed to block the tongue with his shield before getting to learn what kind of horrible damage that would have done.    With the creature finally standing up out of the water where she could get a clean shot, Polly shot it once in each eye.  The first shot was a critical hit, working around the creature's inhuman dodge.  And once it took an arrow through the eye into its brain, the death spiral began.  The stunning and slowing from the first arrow caused it to fail its dodge against the second arrow, for still more brain damage.  It rolled a 17 on one of the major wound checks for a brain injury, resulting in a knockout.  But, while knocked out, it was still visibly regenerating.

And that point the whole party pitched in to carve up the monster.  Polly gave the kid they'd rescued (named Jath) a souvenir arrow, which the kid immediately started stabbing the creature with.  Elias used his Flaming silvered flail, but it didn't stop regenerating because of fire or silver.  Eventually they stopped trying to think of good ways to stop regeneration, and just resolved to keep chopping until it stopped healing, which eventually worked.

Zaber had spotted some coins and gems in and near the stream, so as soon as the trog frog demon was dead, he went collecting treasure.  Among the treasure was a jade drum, which the group had been looking for to help free the air elemental a level up.  There was some natural light filtering into the cave from the north, and the woman (named Carlia) said their home was that way, so the group decided to go that way for now, and head back to Cillamar later.

GM's Comments:

Garreth wasn't available this week, and the party also failed their availability roll for Hugin, so no truly beefy melee fighters were around.  This didn't seem to matter a whole lot though, as Polly kept pumping out damage, and Zaber and Elias also got a good few shots in.  Seépravir, as usual, didn't bother fighting but just buffed everyone else.

The bat swarms presented some challenge, since nobody has any really good anti-diffuse attacks, but they only rolled decent damage against a lightly-armored character once.  The miner ants and frog-trainer troglodytes were pretty wimpy.  The giant frogs were not as tough as I expected, probably largely because a Great Hasted Polly kept shooting them before they reached melee range, and they kept failing their Stay Conscious checks.  The giant trog demon frog thing was a real challenge, but with all his allies dead, the PCs all ganged up on him, and once Polly got a couple of eye shots in, it was all over.

Besides fighting, the party found a few interesting things this week: a way down to possibly a new level, a deeper entrance to the dungeons, and a jade drum that may be the third musical instrument they need to free the air elemental.  Plus of course there's still the lich librarian they found last week.

DF Whiterock Session 27: It's a Lich!

Date:

2018-11-16

Weather:

Freezing, snowy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 230 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 279 points

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 267 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 251 points

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 289 points

Significant NPCs:

7 Giant Soldier Stonebore Ants
Giant Queen Stonebore Ant
Stone Door Golem
Loras, Lich Librarian of the Order of the Dawning Sun

The party gathered at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar to discuss their week.

Seépravir had been researching the Ring of Water Breathing that the nixie had given them as a reward several months ago, but found nothing.  She had also discovered that the writing on the Returning Spear indicated that it was a gift to Elweiss by Koborth.  Elweiss wasn't famous, but Koborth was a famous dragon-slaying general from hundreds of years ago, and a member of the Company of the Black Osprey.

Elias was told by Elder Brother Sampson in the temple of Elyr to keep an eye out for any evidence of the Temple of the Dawning Sun.

Zaber went looking for Lord Granger Flitwick and found that he probably went south for the winter, and had retained a part-time servant to keep his house clean while he was gone.

Garreth bought some snowshoes to improve his movement speed in snow.

Everyone went trudging through the snow toward Castle Whiterock, except that Seépravir floated above it with Levitate.  They chose to go the long way around Lake Whiterock rather than straight over it, not trusting that the ice was thick enough to walk on yet.  It took a long time to get there, but nothing attacked them on the way.

When they arrived at the Castle and got underground, several PCs immediately stowed their winter clothes in the wheelbarrow to save weight.  Seépravir cast Invisibility on Zaber and Polly, Dark Vision on Zaber and Polly and herself, Alertness and Keen Vision and See Secrets and See Invisible on Zaber, Lighten Burden on Elias, and Haste on herself.  Zaber and Polly scouted ahead and Zaber found a big rock that looked like it had been placed to block a passage.  Polly moved it a bit so that they could peek around it, and Zaber saw a huge cave below, full of lots of cat-sized ants, a few human-sized soldier ants, and one huge queen ant.  Eventually one of the soldier ants sensed the moved rock above, and started climbing up to investigate.  At that point Zaber sprinted back to get the others, while Polly covered the small opening with her bow.

It took the ant a while to climb the wall, and by the time it reached the top, Zaber had alerted the other 3 and they had almost reached Polly.  Polly had invisibly stepped back from the ant rather than shooting it, and it hadn't figured out she was there, but it saw Elias, and decided to bite him.  Garreth, standing nearby, had taken a Wait action to attack the ant if it came close, and when it tried to bite Elias, he chopped it viciously, knocking it unconscious.  It screamed first, alerting the other ants that there was trouble up there.

Still invisible, Zaber decided to squeeze past the rock and climb out on the wall, so he could report back what the ants were doing.  The wall was slippery (Climbing-5), but he managed.  He saw a few other soldier ants milling around the queen, then heading off to the north.

Polly moved over to the gap, looked down at the ants she could see, and started aiming.  (She never aims.  Aiming is very optional for Heroic Archers.)  Meanwhile Seépravir saw several ants coming down the hallway behind the group, attemping to flank.  Seépravir stopped maintaining a bunch of spells to lose the -1s for spells on, then yelled out some tactical advice to Polly about shooting them in the weak spot behind the neck.  Polly shot the queen ant there, and hurt her badly, knocking her unconscious.  This made the other ants angry and they started moving faster.

Seépravir tried casting Smoke to block the approaching ants' view, but failed.  Garreth threw a sai at one of the ants, missed the one he was aiming at, but accidentally hit the one behind it, doing minimal damage.  Polly shot an ant next to the queen in the skull and hurt it badly.

Zaber decided that since he was no longer invisible he should get off the wall and crawl back past the rock to be near his friends.  Seépravir Smoked the approaching ants, successfully this time.  One ant ran up to Elias and tried to bite him, but he parried.  Another one tried for Seépravir, but she retreated and dodged.  Still another one went for Garreth, who had his katana in his off hand (because his good hand had just thrown a sai), so he did a retreating dodge away from it.

Seépravir stopped maintaining the Smoke that the ants had just run out of, and made more Smoke on the ants' current locations.  Garreth double-chopped an ant in the smoke next to him, who saw the incoming attacks well enough to dodge both.  Polly shot the injured ant down in the cave by the queen again, and killed it.  Elias tried smashing an ant with his flaming flail, but it dodged.

The ants had to make HT checks for being in Smoke.  They rolled well, so it wasn't a problem, and they all charged into close combat with the PCs.  None of them managed to actually hurt anyone.

Seépravir stopped maintaining Smoke and cast Mass Daze on the ants (note: this was illegal, as Mind Control spells require an intelligent target with IQ 6+, but we all forgot), and Dazed 2 out of 4, essentially making them stop fighting until attacked.  Garreth chopped up an un-Dazed ant and knocked it out.  With his Rapid Strike he also tried attacking the one in Elias's hex, but it dodged.  Because Elias was also in the hex, Garreth had to roll high to avoid hitting Elias.  He rolled low enough to risk hitting Elias, so used his Luck, and then managed to miss Elias, without forcing Elias to make a defense roll.  "Do not accidentally kill the cleric who casts Bless on everyone" seems like a pretty good rule.

Polly fired two arrows at the ant near Elias, but it dodged both.  Elias tried flailing it in the skull, but missed.  An ant tried to bite Polly, but she acrobatically dodged it.  Seépravir cast Death Vision (which she has at 25, for 1s casting time) on the last ant that was still fighting, mentally stunning it.  At that point no ants where still fighting, and we were about to see each ant quadruple-teamed by PCs while Seépravir re-stunned any that somehow managed to survive and recover from stun, so I just called the fight to save another few minutes of brutality.

Quintus had paid $150 for the acid from the first stonebore solider ant the group had brought to him, so the dead ants in the upper corridor were decapitated and their heads thrown in a wheelbarrow.  Then the group had to get down to the cavern below, where the queen ant and a soldier had been taken out by Polly's arrows.

Zaber climbed down.  Polly climbed down, though it required Luck to avoid a nasty 30' fall.  Seépravir Levitated the other three down.  Someone chopped the head off the dead soldier, and the poison stinger off the queen, and then Zaber started looking for treasure.  Zaber found a few copper coins and a valuable silver gravy bowl.  Seépravir found a wand, but it was the cleric kind rather than the wizard kind, so she handed it to Elias.  Elias saw that it had a glyph of Delvyr, the god of knowledge and light, on it.  He started playing with the wand, and managed to set off a Daylight spell.  I made everyone make a HT roll, and Zaber critically failed and had Dark Vision running, so he was blinded by the intense light.  (Daylight isn't really an attack spell, but critical failures are fun, so he got the effect of Flash.)

While Zaber was blinking and trying to get his vision back, Seépravir cast Seek Magic, and spotted a lot of magic southwest and down.  That was enough to get the whole group headed that way.  Polly found a shaft going down, though it was full of dead larva, ant shells, slime, and other junk.  Seépravir, wanting to get to the magic as quickly as possible, started spamming Earth to Air to widen the shaft.  Then everyone headed down.  (By that point Zaber just had a small penalty to his Vision, but his Vision is so high it didn't matter much.)

The group went down a small, stuffy passage, until they saw a huge stone door ahead, with a mouth in the center of it.  The mouth spoke to them and said "Drazzt Onway Ixt My Derangshu Stang Yar Maeron Bub Een Flambran".  The PCs only recognized two words out of that, "My" in Common and "Maeron" in Elvish, which means "Key".  Zaber also noticed some writing around the door, in Dwarf runes, though he couldn't read them.  (Zaber has broken Dwarvish, so he doesn't know all the runes, just the more common ones like Gold and Ale and Men's Room.)

After some random ideas that didn't work, Elias cast Gift of Letters, and could read the runes.  They were in dwarven, but they were in code, so knowing dwarven was not enough.  Elias read out the encrypted text, "ledge reverse two door right key pass connect" in hopes that someone else could figure it out.  (Elias missed his IQ roll to decipher it.)  Zaber gave it a shot, and rolled a 3, a maximum critical success, so he got the correct riddle:

"The key is on the ledge,

But have you the right to know?

Reverse and connect the last two,

To pass the door through."

Of course this was still a riddle to solve, even after passing the first test (read Dwarf) and the second test (make an IQ roll to decipher it).  Polly said "Hey...The mad monk!" remembering something from many sessions ago.  Before Polly could say more, Zaber tried to just open the door.  The mouth tried to bite him, but he dodged it.  Polly then went up to the door and said "Knowledge is the key", which was the correct answer to the riddle (and which found written on the wall by the mad monk long ago, during the session 9, when Polly almost got eaten by a giant praying mantis), but answering the riddle didn't make the door open.

At that point, Zaber was standing too close to the door, and it suddenly decided to open outward and Slam him.  He rolled a 3 on his retreating dodge, for an effortless and impressive hop out of the way.  At that point Elias started looking for a ledge, though there was not one in the room.  He went back to the ant cavern, hoping a ledge there would help, but it did not.  Garreth went along, thinking that maybe a book or scroll from the wheelbarrow would help.

The group had 3 scrolls available: a Mage Light scroll in Dwarf from last session (precious because Mage Light isn't a DFRPG spell so it's hard to find), and Concussion and Deathtouch scrolls that Seépravir just happens to carry around with her just in case.  Seépravir decided that Concussion was the most disposable, and Apportated it over to the mouth in the door, which ate it.  The scroll disappeared but the door opened.

The group wandered through the open door, into a big square room with statues of sword-wielding women in all four corners.  While they were looking around, a skeletal being in wizard's robes walked up and said hello.  Elias immediately recognized it as a lich and freaked out, since liches are very powerful and very evil and they were almost certainly going to die.  The lich asked Elias to turn off the Flaming Weapon spell on his flail, as fire was not welcome here.  Elias ignored this and continued freaking out, telling everyone to run.  Elias noticed that the lich was wearing a holy symbol of the Monks of the Dawning Sun and told the lich to hand it over.  This didn't go well.  Seépravir ended the freak-out by casting Death Vision on Elias and rolling a 4, a critical success, mentally stunning him with no resistance possible.

At that point Polly figured out the statues were Carytid Columns and had a nostalgia moment.  Elias recovered from mental stun from Death Vision and resumed freaking out, so Seépravir cast Daze on him, and won the contest against his resistance roll.  That took Elias out for long enough for the others to have a polite conversation with the lich.

His name was Loras, he was the last member of the Order of the Dawning Sun remaining, he had to turn himself into a lich to avoid dying of old age since he had a responsibility to his Order, and this hidden level was the Order's library.  Loras asked Garreth to take Elias's Flaming flail and put it outside.  Garreth gently removed it from Elias's hand, and the fire went out, which was good enough for Loras.  Loras asked for any history of the area over the last several hundred years, but Seépravir rolled horribly on her History roll, and Loras was not impressed.  He asked the group to bring him history books and/or learned old people.

Loras asked Garreth to supervise the dazed Elias, then led the others to a spiral staircase, which was inside a tower about 150' tall, with bookshelves all along its walls.  Seépravir started asking if she could look at the books, but Loras told her that that would require a trade: bring him books to keep, and in exchange she might be allowed to do research here.  There was a bit more discussion, but then Loras said that it was his daily scrying time and they needed to go, but that they were welcome to return if they brought books.  Also that they should not tell anyone else of the location of his library, and that if they brought any visitors, they should be blindfolded.

The PCs went back up to the ant room, and Seépravir cast Seek Earth for gold, silver, and platinum.  Platinum found a tiny platinum hairpin in the room, which previous searches had missed.  She also did a search for steel, which found a lot of it, way down.  We were out of time, so everyone went back to town.  The ant's treasure made it a moderately profitable session, and of course finding a hidden library guarded by a lich was interesting to some.

Making Automatic Rolls for PCs Between Sessions

Player characters in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy games often have things to do in town between sessions.  Some of these things are interesting and require player decisions and should probably be played out.  Others are boring and don't really require decisions and might just be resolved by the GM between sessions, to save precious play time.  Where do you draw the line?

In DF Whiterock, I have a few house rules for this.

1. Within reason, any spellcaster who has a completely boring spell at 16+ and the Luck advantage can just automatically cast that spell between sessions.  This is the Continual Light rule.  In GURPS, Continual Light only lasts 2-12 days, not forever, so you pretty much want to recast all your Continual Lights before each delve so they don't expire in mid-dungeon.  Yawn.  Fine, they all succeeded.  Because if you rolled a 17, it's just 1 FP and you'd reroll.  And if you rolled an 18, you'd use your Luck to avoid the critical failure.  (Note: "within reason."  Of course this only applies if you're casting a reasonable number of spells.  If you're casting enough to light the whole town, that's boring.)

2. For spells and skills that are boring and obvious to use, but where failure matters and is not obvious, it's up to the player whether to have me automatically roll between sessions, or to have me roll for them during the session.  Luck will not be used, because you don't know you failed to use it.  Popular examples are Analyze Magic on every single magic item (Detecting the Magic is mostly easy in GURPS, for anyone with Magery), Connoisseur (Weapons) on every weapon found, and Merchant on every gem found.

3. If a spell is particularly risky to use, because the PC's spell skill is low enough that critical failure is likely, I'd rather wait until the session to use it.  If a player is going to accidentally summon a demon and be eaten by it, that should happen with everyone around and the player rather than the GM rolling dice.  "Your wizard died between sessions" is a sentence that should never be uttered.


What this means in practice:

1. Everyone has as many Continual Light items as they need.

2. Items that are easy to identify are mostly identified by the next session.

3. Items that are hard to identify (because they require a spell or skill that that PCs don't have, or don't have at a decent level, or because they require roleplaying or other interesting choices, like whether to hire an expert) stay unidentified until the next session, then the players sometimes remember to try to figure them out.

DF Whiterock Session 26: Daycare Destruction

Date:

2018-11-09

Weather:

Freezing, clear

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 226 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 274 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 262 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 247 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 284 points

Significant NPCs:

Caswallon, Dwarf mining engineer

2 Earth Mephits

Labor rat

3 Giant Soldier Stonebore Ants

4 Guard Rats

8 Juvenile Troglodytes

Winter arrived in the Kingdom of Morrain, with the temperature dropping below freezing for the first time since the exploration of Castle Whiterock began.  The first order of business was for the PCs to buy some winter clothing.  This immediately set off encumbrance panic, as several PCs were right below an encumbrance break point, and heavier clothes would reduced their Move and Dodge.  Seépravir decided to learn the Warmth spell and pair it with a stylish but not very heavy scarf.  Everyone else grudgingly purchased some warm clothes, though a couple of PCs decided to leave them in the wheelbarrow once they reached the dungeon.

Caswallon showed up in the Inn of the Slumbering Drake and announced that the dungeon elevator the group had ordered, to add a shortcut from the surface to the Gnomish Academy, was ready to install on the next warm day.  It's early winter, so nobody's sure when that will be.  The PCs discussed possibly using fire magic to warm up the frozen ground, to avoid possibly having to wait until spring to get their elevator.  Though it's also possible there may be a warm spell.

After some time spent looking for interesting rumors, and looking for Lord Flitwick (who was out of town again), four PCs walked to Castle Whiterock.  They walked very slowly, not accustomed to hiking in the cold, but still managed not to get ambushed by any wandering monsters.

There was some discussion of going back to the air elemental that Zaber hoped was female, but since the group only had 1.5 (the flute, and the lute's strings) of the 3 Sorrowsong Instruments, they decided not to bother disappointing it with lack of progress.  So instead they went back down to the level where they fought some deeper troglodytes last time.

Seépravir cast Invisibility and Mage-Stealth on Zaber, and he went scouting alone for a while.  He found a pit trap, a steel doorknob sticking out of a wall for no obvious reason, and a bell with a Dwarf rune on it.  Zaber's Dwarf isn't the best, but he though the rune meant something like "Leave!"  (Zaber successfully resisted his Curious disadvantage to avoid ringing the bell.)  He also found a big rock that looked like it was blocking a passage.  And he found a cave containing a large number of small troglodytes, guarded by a few giant rats.  But the most interesting thing he found was a big cavern containing a flying dwarf-like creature ordering a giant labor rat to drag junk around.  Zaber reported back to the others, and they decided to ambush the flying thing.

Some sneaking ensued, and everyone did a pretty good job sneaking up on the flying creature, until Elias decided to talk to it and spoiled the surprise.  The creature was not friendly, told Elias to eat its waste products, and told the giant rat to attack.  Polly started shooting arrows at it, but it had the ability to magically parry some of them, and dodged others.  The creature (which Seépravir later identified as an Earth Mephit) breathed some stone fragments at Elias, but he blocked them with his shield.  It then gated in a second Mephit, which wasn't happy about it.  

The giant rat attacked Elias, who parried, and then smashed the rat with his Flaming flail.  Seépravir used Rapier Wit on the summoned Mephit, which was stunned.  Polly shot up a Mephit and crippled a wing, leading to a stun and a crash into the ground.  As Zaber invisibly snuck around, the original Mephit cast a spell to loosen some rocks in the ceiling, and drop them on the heads of Seépravir, Garreth, and (oops) the gated-in mephit.  The attack was only accurate against Seépravir though, and she jumped out of the way.

Zaber invisibly stabbed the giant rat in the eye, with his knife crippling the eye and proceeding into the brain, and knocked it out.  Garreth chopped up the stunned summoned Mephit and hurt it badly enough to make it take 3 death checks, but somehow didn't kill it.  It then disappeared!

Seépravir got close to the original Mephit, stopped maintaining all the spells she could to increase her casting odds, and then cast Death Vision on it.  Her spell worked, which meant the Mephit was stunned with no resistance possible, and that was pretty much it.  Polly shot it and Garreth stabbed it and no more Mephits.  It had three different magic items, a ring and a cloak and a pair of bracers.  The dead rat had a sled.  Zaber searched the room thoroughly and found some coins and gems, as well as a bunch of junky mining tools.  

With the fight over, the group decided to investigate the doorknob.  Zaber tried turning it, but failed.  Garreth started ambling over to apply excessive force, but Polly was closer, and she gave it a try first, and she managed to rip it right off the wall.  The doorknob appeared to be a decoy, hiding a falling stone wall trap, which Zaber hadn't noticed and which fell on Polly.  But she's pretty quick and managed to jump out of the way.

Seépravir went into wizard radar mode and cast Seek Magic and Seek Earth (for gold, silver, and copper) and determined that there was some magic and some silver to the northwest.  But then she was rudely interrupted by 3 Giant Stonebore Soldier Ants which decided to come investigate who'd been making all the noise, with all the fighting and walls and ceilings falling.  The elves don't like fighting natural creatures, so decided not to start anything, and Seépravir used Create Fire to try to scare the ants off.  But the ants weren't afraid of the fire, and started trying to bite people.  At that point the PCs defended themselves, and in a few minutes there were 3 dead Giant Stonebore Soldier Ants.  Garreth started chopping off chitin, looking to see if it was valuable, and the group decided to take one big ant corpse back to town to see if there's anything that Quintus the alchemist wanted to buy.

After fighting the ants, everyone forgot about the treasure to the northwest and decided to go ambush the trogs and rats to the east.  Once again, there was much sneaking.  This time, nobody yelled out a greeting, so the sneaking was more effective.  Zaber and Seépravir were both Invisible, and snuck right past the guard rats into the group of troglodytes, who were playing loudly and smelling up the place.  (Everyone made their HT check against the stench attack, though Elias needed to use his Luck.)  Unfortunately, Seépravir rolled an 18 on her Stealth check to move silently, and made a big noise, which alerted some of the surprised rats and trogs.  This was a cue for the rest of the PCs in the back to start shooting and charging, while most of the trogs and rats were still mentally stunned by surprise.  These particular trogs were juveniles, not as tough as the others, and I broke out the Mook rules, so they tended to go down with one solid hit rather than making all those tedious rolls to avoid crippling and stay conscious and avoid dying.  That made this fight pretty much a cakewalk, despite the numerical disadvantage.

Seépravir got off a Mass Daze, but she only made it by a couple of points (despite burning her Luck: she rolled 3 12s in a row) and the victims rolled pretty well on their resistance checks, so only a couple of victims were dazed.  It didn't matter.  Polly started shooting and Garreth started chopping and Zaber started backstabbing and Elias started flailing and all the rats and trogs were down by the time the session ended.  Zaber searched the room, despite the stench, and found a few coins and a couple of very nice purple corumdum gems.

We were out of time, so the PCs decided to go back to Cillamar, bringing along the portable treasure and also one of the dead ants.  Seépravir rolled a critical failure on her Warmth spell for the trip home, and didn't have any Luck left, but I decided that was a pretty tame spell and we didn't really have time for any demon summonings, so just gave her a few easily-healed points of burn damage.

GM's Comments:

This session was a cakewalk.

The Earth Mephit was pretty tough (solid DR, lots of fun attacks), and even managed to gate in an ally, but numbers matter a lot in GURPS, and 5 PCs versus 3 enemies is typically not a fair fight unless the enemies are truly badass.  Plus its collapsing ceiling trap rolled poorly and Seépravir (the only one it managed to possibly hit) made her Dodge.  The Mephits had good blocking spells (Deflect and Iron Arm), but you can only cast one blocking spell per turn, and Polly and Garreth each typically attack twice per turn, so it was needing to make its Dodge rolls against the second attack, and once it missed one and lost a wing, the death spiral began.  Plus Seépravir is good at stun-locking things with Rapier Wit and Death Vision.  And you don't want to be stunned while you're outnumbered by multiple heavily-armed PCs.

The PCs attracted a wandering monster for once, but I only rolled 3 ants, and it turned out that 3 ants are not enough ants.

The troglodyte daycare encounter was not a fair fight.  Zaber scouted it out while invisible and made a critical success on his stealth roll, for total surprise.  This time Elias decided not to ruin it by yelling.  Seépravir partially ruined it with a critical failure on her stealth roll, but she was still Invisible, and the trogs were busy playing not paying attention, so only a few noticed.  And, they were mooks.  It was pretty much target practice.

So the PCs have cleared out a decent part of the second troglodyte level.  Will they find more challenging opponents in the remaining part of the level?  We'll find out next week.

DF Whiterock Session 25: Deeper Troglodytes and a Pearly Spear

Date:

2018-11-02

Weather:

Cool, cloudy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 222 points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 269 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 257 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 242 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 279 points

Significant NPCs:

Lady Chauntessa, innkeeper and amateur historian
Quintus, alchemist and wizard

13 troglodyte warriors

4 huge rats

A gray ooze

The PCs met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake and tried to deal with some loot.  First they tried showing the tome about golems (written in Draconic) to Ixnay the shoulder dragon, but he wasn't interested.  Then they asked about resizing gnome-sized magic clothing to fit larger people, but got no evidence that it was possible without ruining the magic.  Zaber went looking for his nemesis Lord Granger Flitwick, but he was out of town, possibly in Mystenmere.

Having run out of interesting things to do in town, the PCs decided to head for Castle Whiterock, and sell all the gnome-sized clothing next time.  Everyone made their Hiking rolls for once, so they made excellent time and did not get ambushed.  Seépravir cast a pile of spells, and then everyone went downstairs to the troglodyte level.  Their wandering monster luck remained strong, and they made it south to the Ceiling Snake area and then down a narrow curving passage to a new level, without encountering enemies.

Zaber scouted ahead invisibly and spotted three troglodyte warriors, accompanied by three huge rats.  Unfortunately Polly was also scouting ahead, visibly, and was spotted, so there was no chance of surprise.  Zaber started sneaking behind the trogs, while Polly started shooting arrows.  Further behind, Garreth heard the sound of arrows flying and a trog screaming, and charged for the battle.  Seépravir and Elias followed, but it would take several seconds to catch up.

During those several seconds, Polly pincushioned a trog, while another one commanded the rats to attack her, then ran away.  Zaber invisibly snuck up behind one of the rats and impaled it in the vitals.  Polly ignored the other rats that were closing on her, and shot the running trog, injuring it badly enough to slow its running.  Zaber backstabbed another rat, which was too busy trying to bite Polly, and injured it but not badly enough.

When the running trog finally got out of range, Polly started shooting rats, and finished off the ones that Zaber had wounded.  About then, Garreth reached the battle, and Polly pointed him to the northwest where the trog had escaped.  Those two gave chase, while the others didn't.

Garreth and Polly reached a battle in progress,with two troglodytes fighting a translucent grayish oozy slimy jelly-like thing, and a third troglodyte with a couple of Polly's arrows sticking out of trying to sneak past.  The wounded troglodyte eventually passed out from its wounds.  The ooze appeared acidic in nature, and was dissolving the trogs' armor and javelins, and eventually injured a trog enough that it decided to run.  Polly shot the remaining trog in the skull a couple of times, and killed it.  Garreth put his katana away and drew a less valuable knife.  Polly put a few cutting arrows into the ooze, doing a lot of damage.  Garreth stabbed it with his knife, doing lame damage, but it just happened to be enough to force a death check and the ooze rolled badly, so Garreth got the kill.  His knife did not survive, and neither did Polly's arrows, but those were all fairly cheap.  Polly shot the retreating trog twice in the legs, crippling both, and reducing it to crawling speed.  She let Garreth finish him, and Garreth finished him.

Meanwhile, Zaber had found an exit to the east: a ledge with a knotted hemp rope, dropping into the darkness.  He climbed down the rope, smelled trog, and climbed back up the rope.  Then a tactical conference began: everyone would go down the rope in quick order, except Seépravir would Levitate.  That didn't happen, though, because after Zaber and Polly went down, Zaber spotted a camouflaged trog against the wall, and pointed it out to Polly, who eventually (there was a failed Gesture roll) started shooting.  So once again we had a split-party fight.

Polly shot a trog in the head a couple of times, with predictable results.  Zaber all-out defended while waiting for reinforcements.  Garreth used his Acrobatics and Climbing skills (and his gloves, allowing sliding down a rope without badly injuring his hands) to do a quick rappel down the rope, reaching the ground uninjured in two seconds.  (Climbing down a knotted rope is easy, but slow.  Going down a rope fast takes skill.)  Seépravir cast Missile Shield and Levitate on herself then started floating over the battle, inviting thrown javelins.  Elias used his Luck to defend against trog stench, then got his crossbow out and started looking for targets, but couldn't see any very well because they were out of the light radius of the flaming flail at his feet.  (Only 3 PCs had Dark Vision.)

The trogs were wearing some kind of insect chitin armor, which broke when it took serious impact.  Zaber stabbed a trog and broke its armor, but didn't do serious damage besides that.  A couple of trogs aimed then threw javelins at Polly.  She almost failed to dodge one of them, then used her Luck.  One threw a javelin at Zaber, who dodged easily.  When Garreth reached the ground, he drew a glowing (full brightness Continual Light) sai, and threw it at a trog.  He missed, but that illuminated that area, which gave Elias something to shoot at.  Garreth pulled out his katana and chopped a trog to death, Zaber stabbed a trog in the eye and knocked it out, and the fight was over before Elias got to shoot.

Searching the dead trogs, Zaber noticed that their javelins all had the same symbol on the heads: knucklebones and fangs under a mountain.  Certainly not trog worksmanship: someone was equipping them.  Nobody recognized the symbol though.

Moving on, the party snuck north down a passage, with Zaber scouting ahead in the lead.  He noticed some flickering firelight, which was suspicious because everyone was pretty sure trogs had Dark Vision.  Maybe they were cooking?  For once, Polly refrained from charging forward and shooting, and instead the party formed up to try a coordinated ambush.  First Zaber checked the passage to the southeast, making sure there weren't more trogs hiding there to sneak up behind them.  He didn't see any, so the attack began.  There were three trogs sitting around a fire, and a huge rat nearby.  One of the trogs had an odd-looking white spear with feathers, and it looked magic to the elves.

But the trogs were alert, and the party failed to achieve surprise, so there was a bit of a stare-off, and then the trog with the weird spear threw it at Polly.  She dodged it, ruining her aim, but then the spear flew back to the thrower!  At that point even the non-elves knew it was magic.  Zaber did All-Out Defense (Dodge) and started heading toward the guy with the magic spear, with larceny in mind.  Polly started shooting the assumed leader, but he dodged.  Seépravir, with Missile Shield still on, headed forward to draw fire.  A couple more trogs threw javelins, and missed.

The leader threw his magic spear at Garreth, who acrobatically dodged with style.  (He made a critical success on the acrobatics roll.)  Elias aimed his crossbow at the rat.  Seépravir, tiring of a fair fight, noticed that several trogs and a rat were kind of clumped together, and cast Mass Daze on them.  She made a decent roll but decided to use her Luck and go for a better roll, and got a 7.  That was enough to defeat everyone's resistance, and there were 2 dazed trogs and a dazed rat, staring into space, not fighting.

The trog leader with the magic spear was the only one not Dazed.  Zaber invisibly front-stabbed (I allow Backstab from the front if you're Invisible and your stealth beats the target's hearing roll) him in the eye, and rolled good damage.  The knife crippled the eye, continued into the brain, and did enough damage to force a major wound check with a huge penalty, which was failed by enough to result in an instant knockout.  At that point the fight was effectively over: leader knocked out and the others dazed, with no defense against the first attack.

Everyone started lining up their unfair attacks against the dazed enemies.  Polly double-shot one trog in the skull.  Garreth double-chopped another dazed trog in the skull.  And Elias shot the rat in the skull.  Heavy brain damage and failed knockout checks all around, and the fight was over.

Unfortunately for the party, treasure was pretty sparse.  The leader had the magic spear, a bag of mushrooms, a shield, and some very stinky leather armor.  The other trogs had javelins and stinky broken insect chitin armor.  But it was otherwise a successful delve: many trogs defeated and no PC injuries.  They headed back to Cillamar.

GM's Comments:

The gray ooze was fun because of its equipment-wrecking acid attacks, but it died before it got to wreck any PC armor, and Garreth was clever enough to use a disposable knife instead of a valuable katana against it.

The troglodyte that was supposed to run away and alert the others failed to get away.  It's hard to run away from Polly.  That turned a potential difficult ambush encounter into a fair fight.

Mass Daze and an Invisible stab to the eye turned a fair fight into a rout.

I find the troglodytes rather boring, but the party is tearing through them rapidly, so maybe they'll get to meet some more interesting enemies soon.