DF Whiterock Session 83: Closing the Bleak Theater

Date:

2020-01-24

Weather:

Cold, session entirely underground

Player Characters:

Elias, Wood Elf Cleric, 403 points
Garreth, Half-Orc Fighter, 464 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 464 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 458 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 469 points

Significant NPCs:

Ereluc, Drow male wizard

Liana, Drow female cleric

Illusory Drow female wizard

Faithful Hound (spell)

Xill Fighter

The Impresario, Duergar Arena Manager

We started in mid-combat again, with Zaber having just opened a trapped door and intruded on a drow family discussion.  An invisible watchdog was barking away.  Polly (who had See Invisible) asked whether the dog looked natural.  I allowed a Perception + Magery check and told her it looked magical.  Polly loosed 3 arrows at the dog, all of which missed or were dodged.  (Actually it was immune to arrows, but I avoided making that too obvious.)  

The dog charged Zaber and bit, but missed due to the skill cap of 9 on Move and Attack.  The drow mom (who happened to be an illusion cast by the drow dad to double the number of parental voices yelling at his daughter in the family drama that the PCs so rudely interrupted), changed roles to combat decoy and started casting a (fake) missile spell.  The younger drow female fast-drew a rapier and advanced cautiously.  Her dad cast a buffing spell on her.

Zaber, still badly wounded from the trap, backed away from the magical dog.  Polly tried putting three more arrows into the dog.  The first two were dodged.  The third time, the dog rolled a 17 on its dodge for an obvious critical failure, but the arrow went right through it, proving that something unusual was going on.  Though Polly assumed ghost-dog rather than spell-dog, and started asking Elias for an Affect Spirits.  Garreth fast-drew his katana and waited for a victim to come within range.

The dog resumed chasing Zaber, despite his invisibility.  Its bit was accurate despite Move and Attack, but Zaber parried.  I ruled that the parry didn't actually physically stop the force dog, just distracted it.  This caused the dog to appear, and also to come in range of Garreth, who tried cutting it.  He missed the dog, and also missed (invisible) Zaber in the same hex.  Not knowing for sure where Zaber was, he tried a second strike, missed the hound again, and this time solidly connected with Zaber -- until Zaber's Bless decided that a Garreth-strength katana strike on top of the earlier trap damage would not be good, and caused him to dodge.  Seépravir and Elias moved up.

The illusory mage kept growing some kind of illusory green missile spell.  (She was never going to throw it, as that would ruin the illusion, just try to draw attacks away from the real drow.)  The real drow wizard cast another buffing spell on his daughter, rolled a critical success, and gloated in Elvish.  Seépravir cast Smoke to cut off visibility to and from the drow in the back, except for one clear corridor for Polly to shoot the male wizard.  

Zaber fast-drew a potion of minor healing and drank it, but only healed a little bit.  Polly loosed an arrow at the drow wizard, accurately, but he Blinked away and was no longer in her line of sight for subsequent shots.  He then fired at Liana, the one with the rapier, but she had Reverse Missiles up, and the arrow came right back at Polly, who dodged it, as Liana whined to her dad about stealing her kills.  Garreth readied the wineskin of healing potions, then dropped it on the floor, for later recovery by Zaber.  The dog came after Garreth, who dodged.  Elias tried casting Affect Spirits, but failed.  Seépravir tried to Dispel Magic the dog, and used Luck when she didn't like the 12 she rolled, taking a 6 instead.  That was enough to succeed, barely.  (The wizard had good skill and Seépravir had a lot of spells on.)  Zaber fast-drew and drank his second healing potion and got another unimpressive amount of healing, though it got him over 1/3 HP, so he was no longer slowed by his wounds.

Polly flew through the smoke until he found the illusory female drow with the glowing green missile spell on the end of her staff, and shot two arrows at her.  The first one was "dodged", but the second was a critical hit, and caused the illusion to disappear.  However, it's hard to tell a disappearing illusion from a successful Blink spell out of line of sight, so the players weren't really sure what happened.  Garreth held his breath and flew through the smoke looking for enemies, but didn't find any.  Zaber, behind the smoke, saw the younger female drow had run through the smoke and was heading south, away from the fight.  Elias also ran through the smoke and failed to find any targets.  Seépravir dropped the smoke, now that it was doing more harm than good.  She then cast Great Haste on Zaber.  (Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the players, the wizard had Blinked behind a door to another room of his apartment, and was back there casting more buff spells on himself.)

Zaber decided to fly to the drow female and eyestab her with the benefit of invisibility.  Unfortunately for him, she heard him coming, and managed to parry.  He thought he was in deep trouble.  Polly came around the corner and fired an arrow at her, forgetting that she had Reverse Missile, and managed to dodge her own returning arrow.  Garreth ran after the drow and tried Rapier Wit, yelling "your parents are dead!"  This had no effect except to make her yell "good!"  (It appears drow are horrible people.)  With Garreth also on her tail, Liana the drow cleric yelled for help in Dwarvish ("Impresario, surface invaders to your northeast!") and then turned invisible.  Elias ran in the general direction of the chase.

Just then, the male drow re-emerged from his apartment and fired some kind of force missile at Polly, which did some damage unaffected by DR.  Trying to draw fire away from his daughter, he yelled various insults.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on Elias.  Zaber went for another stab on Liana, but she defended.  Polly loosed an arrow at the male wizard, who Blinked away out of sight.  She launched more arrows at no particular target, hoping to get lucky, to no avail.  Garreth used his Blind Fighting ability to try to find an enemy, and heard that Liana was two hexes south.  She managed to retreat and dodge his first attack, and then his second attack missed by a mile.  (Clearly her retreat threw him off.)  

Though invisible, Liana chose to keep yelling, choosing the hope of reinforcement over pure stealth.  She yelled "Impresario great sir, invaders, come repel with your martial excellence.  Show them duergar fury please.  I think they killed my dad.  So I speak with full authority of my House when I say we need them scourged."  (Showing that not only PCs can ridiculously abuse the amount of speech you can fit into a free action during a one-second round.)  

Zaber broke off pursuit and flew back to the wineskin of healing potions, grabbing it.  Garreth stopped chasing and all-out defended.  Liana kept running away invisibly, while yelling "Impressario you're our only hope. Without you the Bleak Theater is doomed. You must hold it for the glory of your Thane!"  Elias cast Major Healing on Polly.  Seépravir cast See Invisible on Garreth.  Zaber drank some healing potion, then moved toward the fight, still carrying the wineskin of healing.  Garreth hurled a sai in the general direction of the fleeing drow, and missed.  Seépravir cast Invisibility on Zaber.

Garreth threw another sai at Liana, while flying two stories above the arena floor.  This time, he hit, meaning the sai came back at him accurately.  And he failed to dodge.  This caused Liana to taunt "Impresario, you're missing the hilarity.  Maybe your bouncers killed the smart ones."  Then she cast Dispel Magic at Garreth, trying to remove his Flight, inflict serious falling damage, and take him out of the fight.  Unfortunately for her, Seépravir's spells are hard to dispel, and Flight survived.  (See Invisible, which was cast later with more other spells on and so a lower net skill level, went away.)  But Liana appeared as she cast the spell, making that not matter.  Meanwhile, a four-armed human-shaped insect holding four swords came out the door.  Polly asked if that was The Impresario, but as far as she knew, The Impresario was a duergar not a bug-man.

Elias tried shield-rushing Liana, but she dodged.  Seépravir Great Hasted Polly.  Zaber tried the old invisible eyestab on Liana the drow for the second time.  This time, she didn't hear him coming, which cost her a crippled eye and some brain damage, which knocked her unconscious.  Zaber then backed away, not wanting to get chopped up by the bug man.  Polly flew toward the bug, then asked if he had a shield.  No shield, just four shortswords.  She loosed an arrow, and the bug man decided he needed to be in a different plane of existence, and disappeared.

Garreth backed against a wall and tried to use his Blind Fighting to detect enemies.  He failed to find any.  The drow wizard came running around the corner and fired a missile at Zaber, doing some damage that DR didn't help against.  He also delivered a brief monologue "Now you die you little surfacer human sneak thief scum.  Nobody stabs my daughter and lives!"  Zaber responded by putting on his Ring of Invisibility.  Whispered to Polly to wait until after he did something before attacking.  Polly waited.  Garreth fast-drew the Magebane potion that he'd been carrying forever, deciding it was finally a good use for it.  He threw it at the hex in front of the wizard.  The wizard Blinked away, smugly getting out of the potion's area of effect, but failed to get out of Polly's line of sight.  Polly then launched an arrow at his vitals.  The wizard realized that the one-blocking-spell-per-turn limit meant that he had to dodge with his feet, like a farmer.  Not really being the athletic type, he failed, and was stunned.  The second arrow hit him right in the heart, fatally.

Zaber flew south, looking for more targets, and saw a huge invisible duergar right behind Garreth, preparing to backstab.  Polly flew back and shot some arrows at the duergar, but he dodged and blocked them.  Then he tried stabbing Garreth in the back, with a magic knife that would have bypassed all of Garreth's armor, except that Garreth's Bless spell decided that Garreth didn't need to be backstabbed right then, and caused the duergar to stumble and miss.  With his cover blown, The Impresario stopped holding his tongue, and yelled "Get back here you Xill coward!  This is why I don't hire extraplanar wussbags!  You son of a lesser mushroom fertilizer!" in Undercommon.  He then lowered his voice and said "I don't know how you dodged that, orc, but you die now." in Common.

Garreth spun around, tried Rapier Wit to call the Impresario an incapable weakling (which the Impresario just ignored, not even bothering to roll dice and pretend he might be affected), then launched a rapid strike.  As he attacked he noticed the duergar was really blurry and hard to see.  The duergar parried the first blow with the hilt of his knife, then dodged the second.

Elias charged forward.  Zaber did too, and tried a (possibly suicidal) all-out attack to the eye.  He rolled a 17, used Luck, and rolled a 5.  The Impresario heard Zaber coming, but chose to dodge without retreating, saving his retreat for Garreth.  He rolled a 15, failed to dodge, lost an eye, dropped his knife, and was stunned.  His Blur effect went away, making him easier to hit.  Polly shot him in the other eye, which still failed to kill him, but which broke his morale.  The Impresario, now blind, yelled "Parley, I know everything!"  Somehow both Garreth and Polly made their checks to resist Bloodlust, and let him live for interrogation.

Everyone looked for the Xill a bit longer, but he didn't come back.  Zaber took the magic knife, and became blurry.  The Impresario asked if the cleric could restore his eyes, pointing out that he was more useful if he could read and find things.  Garreth said that wouldn't be needed in Cillamar, and he might even stand trial.  The Impresario said that a fair trial by combat would require his eyes.  Garreth explained the concept of surfacer trial.  Trying again, The Impresario said "And you're going to steal the thrice-cursed blade?"  Garreth explained that it was spoils of war, not stealing, but hearing the weapon's name, Zaber was suddenly less enthusiastic about playing with it.  The duergar passed out, and his Enlarge went away.  Elias cast Major Healing and Stop Bleeding to keep him from bleeding to death.  

Zaber started looting The Impresario's office.  He found arena ledgers.  Mostly boring financial data, but they showed that Gora (the hobgoblin vampire who escaped them twice) was champion last year.  Garreth finished off Liana, who'd annoyed him too much.

Elias cast Awaken on The Impresario, and then Seépravir cast Possession, to speed the interrogation process.  He revealed that the arena was out of fighters, with most having being pulled back to Narborg and The Impresario being told by the Thane that he could defend against lowly surfacers with what troops he had left.  Also that he would be executed if he failed to defend it.  Gora's coffin was down in Narborg somewhere.  The Impresario didn't know where Koborth's sword Scalemar was.  The Xill had probably retreated to its plane, as extraplanar cowards tend to do when battle turns against them.

Returning to the drow apartment, Zaber found a fancy-looking rug, and a secret compartment in a bed, containing some gems and coins and a bearer note in Dwarven, payable by the Hall of the Mountain King.  Polly started asking The Impresario about trivia like favorite arena fights.  At some point he revealed that there was a surface dwarf prisoner in the Thane's apartment on this level.  (This confused Polly, who thought all dwarves live underground, but it turns out that duergar consider anything less than 500' deep the surface.)  

The group headed northwest to the Thane's arena apartment.  It was unguarded, but there was an unconscious, chained, very thin dwarf on the floor.  Garreth woke him up and gave him food and water.  Elias followed that up with Major Healing, which was enough to get the dwarf talking while he ate.  His name was Urgus, he was a cartographer, some drow stole his map, and he had been captured trying to recover it.  He was also an enchanter, or had been before they put a ring on him that disabled his Magery.  This piqued Garreth's interest.  Garreth pulled the map out of the Bag of Holding and asked Urgus if that was the right one.  He took it back and thanked them.  Urgus mentioned that the Thane had some fancy clothes in this apartment.

Before leaving, Seépravir cast Seek Magic, then Seek Earth for gold, platinum, and silver.  Seek Magic found a magic belt in the Thane's closet.  There was other treasure there as well, like goblets with rubies, a snifter of booze, a couple of royal outfits, an iron box with etchings, and a ring.  The other seek spells didn't find any other examples of those metals nearby; the nearest was southwest, presumably in Narborg.  The PCs gathered up their treasure.  Seépravir Entombed The Impresario in case they needed him again in the future.  Then they returned to Cillamar, bringing Urgus along.

GM's Comments:

Giving Perception + Magery checks to detect that the drow dog was a magical spell rather than a real dog may have been a bit generous; Magery clearly says magic items only, not spells.  On the other hand, the D&D Faithful Hound spell is pretty overpowered (you can't hurt it, except by dispelling it, but it can hurt you, badly), so it feels unfair to also make its nature too hard to detect.

Similarly, I allowed the Hound to be parried, even though an un-hurtable enemy might well be unblockable and un-parryable, because the spell didn't specifically say (well, there aren't exactly parries in D&D, but it didn't have any kind of "always hit" or "defender's AC is penalized" powers), and I didn't want to make it even more overpowered.  And I decided it became visible when it attacked, like most invisible things, for the same reasons.  (Though that also made it a better decoy, since those without See Invisible are less likely to attack invisible enemies.)

Both Polly and Garreth attacked Liana with ranged weapons, a total of 3 more times, after the first time Reverse Missiles sent one of Polly's arrows back at Polly.   Both players are usually good at paying attention and tactics, so I found this hilarious.  Of course Garreth has so much DR and so many HP that it didn't matter much.

What counts as an attack for invisibility purposes is always subject to GM judgement.  I ruled that casting Dispel Magic with the intent of making a flying person crash to the ground was an attack.  Other uses of the same spell would not be.  It's magic; it doesn't have to make a whole lot of sense.

The Xill was a pretty lame opponent, because he had four shortswords and no shield.  Three swords and one shield, or two swords and two shields, would have been better.  However, his ability to flee to the ethereal plane and stay there kept him from being skewered by Polly for not having a shield.

DF Whiterock Session 82: Demon Bear and the Duergar Tower

Date:

2020-01-17

Weather:

Cold, session entirely underground

Player Characters:

Elias, Wood Elf Cleric, 400 points
Garreth, Half-Orc Fighter, 462 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 462 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 456 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 467 points

Significant NPCs:

Fiendish Polar Bear

4 Duergar warriors

Manticore

Flesh Golem

3 Drow

We started with Zaber and Polly, scouting ahead, just having opened a door and spotted a huge white bear inside.  The bear looked angry.  Polly checked to see if it was natural, but she wasn't sure.  It had a collar and a chain.  Polly headed back to the others to see if Seépravir could tell her anything.  Zaber, invisible, sat there, as the bear decided to run past him after Polly.  (The chain had apparently been broken already.)

When the bear came around the corner and Elias saw it, he immediately saw in its eyes that it was an evil demon bear, not a regular polar bear.  Garreth threw a sai at the bear and did some damage.  Seépravir then cast Death Vision at the bear, which caused the bear to start jumping in place like it thought the floor was trying to eat it.  Polly attempted to flying tackle the stunned bear, but it was too strong, and didn't fall over.  Zaber tried calming the bear with Animal Handling (his specialty is mustelids not bears, but he tried anyway), but the bear was not impressed.

Elias's turn finally came, and he screamed that the bear was an evil demon and double smashed it in the skull with his flail, killing it.  This saved the other elves a lot of guilt about fighting a poor animal, and they turned their attention from saving nature to harvesting its pelt.  Elias was having none of it, and started trying to set the demon bear corpse on fire with his flaming flail.  Helpfully, the other end of the bear spontaneously combusted while he was doing this.  This finally convinced the others that maybe Elias knew something about demon bears after all.

After a minute, Zaber and Polly went back to the room the bear had occupied.  The room had one brick wall, and the broken remnants of the bear's chain.  It also had a table covered with needles and bottles and spilled blood, and a grotesque statue of a human male with no skin, and another door.  Seépravir tried to identify the contents of the bottles with Alchemy, and decided they were different colors of dyes.  Polly pickaxed the brick wall, but didn't find anything.

Seépravir cast Seeker trying to find dye-based art, and got an image of two tattooed Derro, running up some stairs.  Zaber was about to open the door, but then saw a trap.  There was an almost-invisible wire leading to the doorknob.  He snipped it, and then they opened the door, finding a small room with a couple of small beds, a lot of small clothing, more needles, and a strong smell.  Garreth decided the brick wall needed more investigation, so went into full vandalism mode, smashing as many bricks as possible.  This still didn't reveal any secrets.  Apparently someone just wanted a brick accent wall.

Leaving the bear den, the group circled around the arena concourse some more.  They found one room that was empty except for some bits of stale mushrooms.  Then they circled back to the south and opened the portcullis they'd skipped before.  Behind it were two doors in sequence.  Continuing his theme of wanton destruction, Garreth smashed the portcullis.

After opening both doors, they saw a huge cave, with a narrow bridge leading south, flanked by two huge (maybe 40' tall?) statues of duergar.  The bridge led south to a small guard tower.  On the roof of the tower were several duergar manning huge spear-throwing crossbows.  (None of the PCs are experts on siege engines so I didn't get too technical: "crossbow big enough to probably kill you if you fail to dodge" is close enough.)  Two of them spotted Zaber and/or Polly and fired spears at them.  Fortunately for Zaber and Polly, they dodged.  The spears were followed up by tail spikes thrown by a manticore on the tower.  Zaber and Polly dodged those as well.

Polly returned fire with her bow, but the duergar blocked or dodged all her arrows.  Zaber put on his Ring of Invisibility.  Garreth chucked a sai and missed.  Elias used his Heroic Might and Heroic Grace and got +9 ST and +11 DX, becoming temporarily Super Holy Death.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on him.  The duergar ducked below the parapets on top of the roof to hide while they reloaded.  The manticore lobbed another volley of spikes at Polly, but she dodged again.  It then realized it was the only target, and also dipped behind cover.

Unfortunately for the defenders of the tower, all the PCs had Flight.  Polly flew up and forward until she regained LOS to a couple of duergar reloading a crossbow, then loosed arrows, and killed one with an arrow through the liver.  The manticore popped up from behind cover and tried to spike Polly again, but she dodged.  (Just barely, and only due to +1 for solid tactical advice from Seépravir, who'd warned her about the manticore.)  The manticore didn't have time to regain cover, and yelled something in Undercommon about how it was arrow bait.  Polly took the bait, and attacked the manticore, who she didn't realize had Missile Shield.  Luckily for her, she rolled a critical hit, so when it dodged anyway, she knew it was cheating with magic.  Polly gave up on shooting it, fast-drew her rapier, and slashed it to death instead, then pointed out that the manticore had a magic ring through its nose.  (Like most elves, she has a bit of Magery and sometimes notices such things.)

Garreth flew up and landed on the tower, seeing no live targets, but some stairs leading down inside.  Elias didn't want to waste his time with Great Haste and Heroic Might and Heroic Grace and flew right to the back of the tower and down the stairs.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on herself.  Zaber, with See Invisible active, noticed an invisible duergar hiding behind a merlon, still trying to reload a giant crossbow.  He flew over and tried slamming the duergar, but he blocked.  Now knowing there was a live target remaining, Polly flew over behind the duergar and shot an arrow.  Somehow, the duergar dodged the rear shot.  The arrow missed Zaber, who'd been standing on the other side of him.  Polly followed up with a couple more arrows, and the duergar's luck ran out, as he was hit, wounded, hit again, knocked out, and then hit once more time and killed.

Inside the tower, Elias didn't see any duergar, but that's because they were invisible.  One of them chopped for his face.  Elias heard the attack coming and blocked, despite the penalty for an invisible attacker.  The now-visible duergar took a second swing, which Elias parried.  Elias didn't hear the second invisible duergar, who thought he landed a vicious blow on Elias's neck.  Elias's Bless decided to expend itself, causing him to dodge a blow he never saw coming.  As the duergar appeared, Elias managed to parry the follow-up attack.  Polly reached the top of the stairs and shot an arrow at one of the duergar, who blocked it.  She then fired another one, which landed and managed to kill the duergar.  That left just one victim for Elias.  He went for all-out attack (feint), first feinting the duergar out of his shorts, then smashing his head in with a flail.  

Continuing into the tower, Elias found a door.  Not wanting to wait for Zaber to come pick it for him, he tried just opening it.  Surprisingly, it was unlocked.  On the other side was a monster that looked like several pieces of human corpses stitched together.  Elias was pretty sure it wasn't a zombie though, at least not the kind he knew about.  He again went for all-out attack (feint), feinted the flesh golem out of the shorts it wasn't wearing, and then smashed it twice with his flaming flail, hitting it hard enough to make it come apart at the seams.

Seépravir flew up onto the roof and cast Great Haste on Garreth.  Garreth was worried about more invisible duergar so went into full paranoia mode preparing to defend from attacks he couldn't see.  Not wanting to waste time while fully powered up, they quickly opened more doors without stopping to rest.  A door to the west led to another bridge, which went a long way to another door at the other end of the bridge.  A door to the east led to a bunkroom, full of duergar-sized beds.  Another door to the north was locked, and led to the bridge back to the arena.  A door to the northwest led to a small kitchen, containing some spilled and half-eaten food.  Failing to find any more duergar, the PCs next started thinking about turning the giant crossbows into personal weapons.  They were a wee bit heavy for that, though.  That led to discussions of building battle carts.

Next the group investigated the moat near the tower.  A Continual Light arrow thrown down showed that it was about 50' deep, and there was nothing interesting inside it.  Polly flew down to recover her arrow.  The two huge statues were a duergar warrior with a hammer, and a duergar wizard with a scroll.  Nothing hidden was found behind or under them.  Garreth thought wrecking the bridges would be a good plan, since the PCs could all fly and maybe the duergar could not.  Seépravir used several castings of Shape Earth to basically remove the western bridge.  (The stone was still there; it was just uselessly decorating the bottom of the moat rather than acting as a bridge.)

After wrecking the bridge, Polly and Zaber headed back north toward the arena.  They went back to the rust monster room, which had stairs up to the upper concourse level.  On the upper level they found an old brown couch and a bookshelf.  The bookshelf had two books, one about why all surface elves should be eradicated, and one about caring for giant bugs.  Zaber took both books.  Once their companions caught up, they headed east around the concourse, exploring.

Zaber spotted a door, and listened at it.  He heard a conversation in Elvish, and a barking dog.  After everyone was ready, Zaber opened the door.  Unfortunately for him, it exploded.  Both Polly and Zaber managed to dive away from it, but still took some damage.  They saw three drow and a dog inside the room, angry at the intrusion.  And then we stopped for the evening.

GM's Comments:

The players were excited to meet and kill a manticore.  There is a lot of nostalgia for classic D&D monsters among gamers.

I was unhappy with the duergar tower fight, because the tower was two levels (roof level and ground level) but I tried putting all the tokens on one map and just remembering which level each was on, which confused the players.  I actually had a separate nice map of the roof, but it was on a different Roll20 map, and Roll20 isn't good at splitting PCs across two maps.  With hindsight, I should have done a copy of the tower roof map as an inset on the same Roll20 map as the ground level of the tower, to make things less confusing.

Zaber is really good at finding traps, but failed to find the one on the drow apartment.  (It was quite well hidden, for a large penalty to the Per-based Traps roll.)  I think that's only the second trap he's missed, at least in recent memory.

DF Whiterock Session 81: The Other Bleak Theater Guard Room

Date:

2020-01-10

Weather:

Unseasonably warm, session entirely underground

Player Characters:

Elias, Wood Elf Cleric, 396 points
Garreth, Half-Orc Fighter, 460 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 460 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 454 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 465 points

Significant NPCs:

8 Duergar warriors

2 Drow clerics

Rust monster

Logan, Wolverine

Polar bear

We resumed with the PCs just having opened a door into a guard post, featuring a bunch of duergar, a drow, and some kind of large buglike monster that had just been let out of a wooden cage and was now charging at them.  Polly immediately shot the bug in the skull, doing enough damage to slow it.  She followed up with a second shot, which knocked it out, before it even got to demonstrate its attacks.  Her third arrow was aimed at the drow, but was blocked.  Zaber drew his knife and All-Out Defended.  Some duergar waited for the PCs while others moved into position.  Garreth stepped forward and used Kiai on one, stunning him.  The drow cast a spell on the monster, which started moving again.

Elias charged forward, and Seépravir Great Hasted herself.  Polly put some more arrows into the monster's brain, which killed it.  She then tried shooting the stunned duergar in the eye, but he managed to block the arrow despite the stun penalty.  Zaber invisibly reached the drow, who never heard him coming, and front-stabbed her in the eye, knocking her out.  One of the duergar tried to slam Polly, but she dodged.  Another one used a melee net to trap Elias, who failed to dodge it.

Garreth tried rapid striking the duergar who just netted Elias with his katana, but his cuts were blocked and dodged.  Elias, with no sharp net-cutting weapon in hand, decided to just burst through the net with brute strength.  This is difficult for most (quick contest of your ST vs. the net's 14), but Elias is very strong, and the net was Hulked into a useless pile of string.  Seépravir tried Death Vision on a duergar, which failed, then she followed up with Rapier Wit and stunned him.  Polly shot the duergar who just failed to slam her in the back, stunning him.  She then flew around another duergar and shot him in the back too, resulting in another stun.  Zaber, with See Invisible, saw some more enlarged invisible duergar coming down the stairs to join the fight.  He shouted a warning as he flew back to cover.  Hearing that, Polly yelled in Elven that a Grease spell on the stairs would be funny.  Garreth used Rapier Wit to insult another duergar's beard, causing stun due to low self-esteem.  He then took a couple of strikes at his shield arm.  The first one was blocked, but the second connected and crippled the arm, ensuring that that duergar's blocking career was over.

Elias, now free of what was left of the net, tried smashing a duergar twice with his flail, but one attack was blocked and the other was parried.  (Even with the penalty for a flail; these duergar were pretty skilled.)  Seépravir followed Polly's advice and cast Grease on the stairs.  This resulted in loud noises, as some huge invisible duergar fell down the stairs and hit the wall, each other, etc.  One of them said "stupid elf greased the stairs" in Dwarven, and another optimistically responded "I'll kill her Cap'n."

Polly shot another duergar in the back of the head, knocking him out.  She loosed more arrows at the pile of prone duergar at the bottom of the steps, but they were blocked and dodged.  Zaber put his Invisibility ring on.  One of the prone duergar tried chopping Polly with his axe, but she dodged.  Garreth tried slashing a duergar, but he parried.  Elias moved up.  Seépravir stopped maintaining some less essential spells and cast Mass Daze at the pigpile, dazing 3 out of 4 duergar.  Polly put more arrows into duergar heads, stunning one and then knocking him out with a critical hit.  (She used an arrow with Continual Light to try to spotlight an invisible target for Elias, who lacked See Invisible.  But the light turned invisible when it hit him.)

The non-dazed duergar tried rapid striking Polly, but she dodged both axe blows.  A drow upstairs cast Dispel Magic on the area featuring the dazed duergar, trying to remove the Grease (which was actually already gone but she didn't know that) and un-daze them.  More duergar came down the stairs.  Garreth Rapier Witted and then chopped the duergar near Polly, crippling his shield arm.  Elias attacked one of the just-undazed duergar with his flail, doing serious damage.  He also bumped into another duergar who was still invisible.  Seépravir Great Hasted Elias and Zaber (with the one on Zaber a critical success that gave him triple speed instead of the usual double), and Rapier Witted another duergar into stun.  Polly shot another couple of duergar in the skull, knocking one out and killing the other.  Zaber flew up the stairs to catch up to the retreating drow caster (which was easy with Flight and Great Haste), and then fatally eye-stabbed her.

One of the duergar near Elias was still invisible, and smashed him in the face with an axe.  He failed his Hearing-2 roll to hear the incoming axe, and took 24 cutting to the face.  Fortunately for him, he had a very stout helmet, which soaked much of the damage.  He needed to use his Luck to reroll a bad stun roll, then was mostly fine.  Garreth retaliated by chopping that now-visible duergar's head mostly off.  Elias tried attacking the last duergar standing, who defended.  Polly followed up with 3 arrows, all of which were dodged.  Zaber flew back down the stairs and stabbed him the face for a critical hit and a knockout, and that was all the guards in the guard post.

With time to study the bodies, the PCs noticed that all the guards' armor and weapons were very hard wood rather than metal.  Clearly their strategy revolved around their pet rust monster that Polly had knocked out before it managed to rust anyone's gear.  Polly found a broken lever (part of Garreth's war on levers) and touched it to the monster's antenna, and it rusted.  Polly and Seépravir then used some of the wooden axes to attempt to dissect the rust monster and recover any valuable bits.  When they were done, Seépravir cast Seek Magic and found that there was some magic nearby to the east.  meanwhile Garreth tried Chi Medicine on Elias, but it didn't help.  The wineskin of healing potions worked better.  Zaber was really sleepy after the double-strength Great Haste wore off, so Seépravir gave him a Lend Energy spell.  

When everyone was done resting, the group went east, in the direction that Seépravir suspected had magic.  The door there had a knocker.  Zaber tried listening at the door, and a trap that he had missed (because I rolled a 17) went off.  This caused a loud alarm in the guard room to the west, and also zapped Zaber with a curse.  He made his resistance roll, so it only gave him -2 to IQ and made him slightly insane.  He started yelling at the door, then telling it to open.  Polly helpfully hit the door with a pickaxe, but this didn't make it open.  Zaber eventually gave up on conversation and picked the lock, right before Polly got serious about chopping it down.

Behind the trapped door was a nice apartment, containing a nice statue of a female elf, and a dining table with some fancy snifters, which still smelled like brandy.  Garreth ripped the door off its hinges, as part of his continued campaign of dungeon vandalism.  Everyone was quite suspicious of the statue.  Garreth wanted to take it, but it weighed about a ton, too much for the Bag of Holding, so they left it for now.  Seépravir's ring started saying rude things about people too gross to clean out their glasses, and offered to Create Water to clean them out.

There was another door.  Zaber lectured it, then picked the lock.  On the other side was a bedroom.  It contained an unmade bed and some dirty women's clothing.  Garreth searched the chairs in the outer room, and found a scroll under a cushion.  He took it to Seépravir, who read it and found that it was a treasure map to "The Great Palace of Zahadran, Lost To Time And The Sands", signed by an Urgus Spellsmith.  Meanwhile Zaber started looking for a teddy bear.  Failing to find one, he freed Logan the Wolverine from his magic bag to help.

Zaber's behavior was erratic enough that the others finally focused on fixing it.  Seépravir tried Dispel Magic, which didn't help.  Garreth tried chi medicine, which also failed.  Elias tried Remove Curse, and that seemed to bring him back to his usual level of intelligence and sanity.  Seépravir tried Analyze Magic on the statue, which told her that it probably had very strong undetectable magic, probably masked.  This caused more discussion of taking the statue home, but it was just too heavy, so the group thought maybe they'd get some stone giants to help, after they cleared out the duergar.

Garreth remembered he had something important to do.  He threw several of the bodies from the guard room into the Bleak Theater arena floor and then yelled "Are you not entertained?"  There was no response.  Afterward, the group resumed exploring the level.  They found a room, empty except for a few unpopped popcorn kernels.  They found another empty room, this one with some scorch marks on a wall.  They found another empty room, this one appearing to be a vacant unfurnished apartment.  They found a portcullis with a lever in front of it.  Pulling the lever caused the portcullis to go up.  But they decided not to go that way (because Zaber said it was further away from the arena and wanted to explore the closer things first), and continued west around the arena concourse instead.

Continuing to the southwest of the arena, Zaber unlocked and opened another door, and found another apartment, with a huge white bear inside.  The bear looked hungry and charged.  But we were out of time and stopped there.

GM's Comments:

The two-level guard room featuring a rust monster, a bunch of duergar, and a couple of drow was a long fight, but the enemies were no match for the PCs.  Great Haste is good.  So is Mass Daze.  So is Rapier Wit.

The insanity trap was a lot of fun, but fortunately Elias had Remove Curse.  Without it, they would have had to either deal with Crazy Zaber for longer, or go back to town.

DF Whiterock Session 80: The Bleak Arena Nosebleed Seats

Date:

2020-01-03

Weather:

Unseasonably warm, session entirely underground

Player Characters:

Elias, Wood Elf Cleric, 392 points
Garreth, Half-Orc Fighter, 458 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 458 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 452 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 463 points

Significant NPCs:

2 Ettins

7 Duergar warriors

After once again defeating the duergar in their guard room, and not finding the hobgoblin vampire anywhere, the PCs again started searching the top level of the Bleak Theater.  They didn't find anything new, or any other occupants.  Zaber and Polly played with levers for a while, raising and lowering portcullises, while Garreth smashed things in an attempt to make the arena unprofitable for the duergar.

Eventually they decided to go downstairs.  They found a workshop, full of tools and building supplies.  After stealing some tools, they continued, until Zaber heard some noise behind a door.  After some discussion, he unlocked and opened the door, and there were two ettins and a bunch of invisible duergar on the other side.  Only Zaber had See Invisible, so he yelled a warning to the others.

Polly shot an ettin in the eye and knocked it unconscious, and then for variety shot the other ettin in the eye and knocked it out too.  She then fired a third arrow hopefully, but it didn't hit anything invisible.  An enlarged duergar appeared and swung his axe at Polly, but she used her Luck to avert a critical hit, then made her Hearing-2 roll to be allowed to defend at -4, then successfully sprung away with an acrobatic, retreating dodge.  He followed up with a second swing, but by then he was visible and easier to dodge.  Garreth drew his katana and then deceptively rapid struck the duergar, causing enough damage to slow him.  Elias charged to get behind the duergar and spun around to face his exposed rear.  Seépravir gave Polly a See Invisible.  Polly saw several more invisible duergar, but didn't have clear shots at any of them, so she shot the visible one in the eye.  This somehow failed to kill him (just missed -5 * HP for instant death), but knocked him out.

Unfortunately for Elias, when he turned his back to surround the visible duergar, he exposed his back to two more invisible duergar.  He was defenseless, but Garreth was facing them, and got a chance to Sacrificial Parry for him.  He did that, four times, as the two duergar each took a Rapid Strike at Elias.  A third invisible duergar went for Seépravir, and Garreth parried the first strike at her too, but then failed to stop the second.  (He actually rolled an 18, but used Luck to turn it into a non-critical failure.)  Seépravir used Phase to momentarily be Somewhere Else when the axe flew through her position.  Yet another duergar went for Seépravir, missing with his first strike, but placing the second one accurately enough that she had to dodge it.  The final duergar in the main clump went after Garreth's face, and Garreth rolled a 17, so he fell down trying to dodge.  This left a large mark, but didn't stun Garreth.  He smacked Garreth in the face a second time for good measure, this time stunning him, but the total damage was not enough to inflict a death check.

Elias tried to flail two of the duergar.  Both parried.  Then Seépravir dropped a Mass Daze on the 4 remaining duergar in the immediate area.  3 failed to resist.  She used Rapier Wit to stun the one that was still moving.  There was another one farther back, trying to run around behind the PCs to flank them, but Polly shot him in the leg and knocked him over and stunned him and made him drop his axe.  That ended the competitive portion of the combat.  While Garreth chugged healing potions, Elias and Polly started finishing off dazed and stunned and unconscious enemies.  Seépravir Entombed one, for some nefarious purpose.  

When searching the bodies, Zaber found a key and a magic crystal.  At that point the group started running around, flipping levers, hearing portcullises go up and down, and smashing levers.  Eventually they found a door onto the main arena floor, with a slot for the crystal.  Zaber inserted the crystal, and then the arena's force defenses went down.  This allowed flying up to the two concourse levels above the arena floor.

Before flying up, the group circled around the arena to the south and east, opening more doors.  They found a few more storerooms full of unexciting stuff, and one armory full of weapons.  They took some weapons and put them in their Bag of Holding.

Doubling back to the arena, they searched for secrets, didn't find any, and flew up to the lower concourse level.  They opened a door, leading to an empty room.  They opened another door, leading to an empty apartment.  They approached another door, and heard a chittering sound behind it.  Everyone formed up, ready to fight.  Zaber unlocked and opened it, and inside were some duergar, some drow, and some bug-like creature, charging at them.

We stopped there for the night.  We'll resume with that combat, next time.

GM's Comments:

Maybe, due to having two heads, ettins should be harder to knock out with a head blow than most creatures.  Maybe you should have to knock out both heads.  I didn't think of this when giving them GURPS stats, though, so it's not how they work, at least not yet...

Lots of exploration time this session.  Much of it re-exploring already trodden ground, so not that exciting.  But the PCs finally figured out how to get past the force fields in the arena to the concourse levels.

DF Whiterock 2019 Year In Review

Assuming the numbers in the session recaps are correct, we played 79-32+1 = 48 sessions of DF Whiterock in 2019.  So almost every week.

Most RPG campaigns don't make it this many sessions, so I'm really happy we're still going.  My advice for people who don't want their campaigns to die is: keep playing on as regular a schedule as possible.  If some people can't make it, play without them.  (This requires either running each other's characters, finding a safe way to pick up and drop off PCs between sessions, or just not caring too much about continuity.)  Because once you start cancelling every time real life affects someone, you keep cancelling, and pretty soon you don't have a campaign.

I'm also happy to have written a recap for every session, even though it's a lot of work.  It gives the players a way to catch up on what they've done without reading the full Roll20 logs, and hopefully it exposes a few other RPG players to the possibilities of GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

After a bit of player turnover and one PC death in 2018, we had the same group of 5 PCs for all of 2019: Elias, Garreth, Ibizaber (who we mostly call Zaber), Polly, and Seépravir.  They started 2019 at 247 - 310 points, and ended 2019 at 392 - 463 points.  I mostly award points for attendance, so the variation mostly just reflects how long each PC has been in the game and how many sessions their player has made.  But, as point totals climbed, I started slowing down awards at various point thresholds, which makes it a bit easier for the lower-powered characters to catch the higher-powered ones.  (And, I hope, keeps the higher-powered ones from getting so powerful that I can't challenge them at all.)

At the start of the year, the PCs were on the Underground River Level, featuring Derro and an Aboleth and various river creatures.  At the end of the year, they were in the Bleak Theater (which is still in progress), a gladiatorial arena run by duergar.  In between was the massive Immense Cavern, taking up 12 Roll20 maps, and featuring a diverse array of creatures like stirges, trolls, a huge turtle, a gelatinous cube, purple worms and the drunk adolescent stone giants who ride them, and a nasty groaning spirit.  Also, they went through a gate to the Far Garden, a forest demiplane, where the good guys were centaurs and fey, and the bad guys were goblins led by a half-fire-giant half-bugbear kung fu master.

In addition to the main levels, they explored several sublevels this year.  Off the Underground River, they found a Hidden Fane of Justicia, with only one monster (a mohrg) but a lot of backstory and a holy artifact.  At the end of the Far Garden they found a gate to the Unicorn Glade of Farewell.  The Immense Cavern contained three distinct sublevels: the Black Pyramid containing a huge clay golem and mummies and low mana zones, the hidden Inverted Tower full of drow and their spider pets, and the hidden pond of a gnome named Penduncle who somehow owned a magic submarine.  Finally, while they're not done with the Bleak Theater yet, they found two sublevels off of it: the tomb of a heroic human warrior named Koborth, and then, behind it, the tomb of a less-heroic halfling thief named Nimboltin Softstep.

So, you can say they only explored three levels this year, and part of a fourth, which seems pretty slow.  On the other hand, this group believes in fully clearing levels.  Garreth and Polly both have Bloodlust and Polly is especially offended at the idea that any hostile monster is left alive, Elias really hates undead and wants to eradicate them all with similar fury, Zaber has high levels of Perception and rarely misses much, and Seépravir has the spells (See Secrets, Seek Earth, Seek Magic) to find all the treasure.  So when they clear a level, they tend to really clear it.

Because Castle Whiterock is so huge, I tend to leave cleared levels cleared rather than restocking them, just to give opportunities for more exploration and less repetition.  But the front guard room of the Bleak Theater, and the trapped room before it, have been an exception.  Every time the PCs have cleared them and gone home, the duergar have posted new guards and reset the trap.  This has annoyed the PCs into staying in the dungeon between sessions more often, rather than going back to town every time.  And also caused some discussion of creating a base inside the dungeon.

Despite their mostly bloodthirsty nature, the PCs have befriended some NPCs inside the dungeon.  They freed an invisible air elemental named Aeraelith from an organ where it had been imprisoned by a drow.  They spared Vulgaris the Minyad on the river level, and she has become fairly friendly, sometimes using the PCs to carry her mushroom beer to Cillamar for trade.  The hard-partying purple-worm-riding young stone giants of the Immense Cavern have been bribed with lots of beer, by both the PCs and Vulgaris.  The PCs also have friendly relations with the ettin Gar and Nar, but quite friendly enough to keep Zaber from stealing their magic ring.  They managed to visit Penduncle the gnome without hostilities, and even gave back some of his treasure that they had accidentally looted.  They returned a greatsword with permanent Affect Spirits named Damarel to an angel that had been turned into a kobold.  And they are currently mostly friendly with the ghost of Korboth's squire Elweiss, though Garreth really doesn't want to return Elweiss's magic spear.

On the backstory front, Seépravir learned some mysterious history about Lady Chauntessa and the Order of the Sundered Scale, a group of paladins who were tasked to kill the great red dragon Benthosruthsa.  Lord Flitwick, the group's enemy since they feel he reneged on a deal to paint pictures of the dungeon for them, has fled the country for warmer lands, and Seépravir bought his vacant townhouse.  Finally, the ghost of Elweiss has started spewing backstory about Koborth, but his memory is somewhat fuzzy and he needs his spear back...

The group has also found a couple of very interesting items.  The Ring of Water Breathing that was gifted long ago to the group by the nixie Nemoura Shimmerscale for saving her from a giant crab turned out (after they accidentally activated more powers) to be an intelligent ring named Aquil'iya.  And a silver rapier that they found in the Black Pyramid turned out to be an intelligent sword named Charithmysis, The Bard Blade, which is sadly so full of itself that it doesn't think any of the PCs are worthy of wielding it.  Fortunately for the haughty rapier, the PCs love magic items too much to destroy it for being a horrible snob.

Finally, besides Lord Flitwick, there is one other recurring villain who has been met multiple times: Gora-Khan the hobgoblin vampire, who has an annoying habit of assuming gaseous form and escaping.  There a couple of duergar leaders who have been mentioned but not yet encountered: The Impressario, who directs the Bleak Theater, and his ruler the Thane Hrolad Vejik of Narborg.  Finally, the group suspects that the ancient red dragon Benthosruthsa, who destroyed the town of Cillamar 320 years ago, might still be down there...

I think we finish this campaign sometime in 2020.  So, here's to one more good year.

DF Whiterock Session 79: Attacking the Bleak Theater Guard Room, Again

Date:

2019-12-27

Weather:

Unseasonably warm, overcast

Player Characters:

Garreth, Half-Orc Fighter, 456 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 456 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 450 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 461 points

Significant NPCs:

Chauntessa, Innkeeper and Historian

Alrux, Dwarf Armorer

Vulgaris, Minyad Druid and Mushroom Farmer

2 Stone Giant Brewery Helpers

Ettin Zombie

6 Duergar Warriors

Gora-Khan, Hobgoblin Vampire

5 Bat Swarms

After finding a large haul of silver coins from Nimboltin Softstep's tomb, the PCs returned to Cillamar.  There, the family of Toos, a woman they rescued from the duergar, rewarded them with baked goods.  Brandis, the bard they rescued, was hanging out at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake and sometimes busking outside.  All five of them got invitations to Lady Chauntessa's New Year's party.

Seépravir decided to buy Lord Flitwick's vacant town house, which had been seized by the town.  The house's contents were included, so she also became the owner of several of Flitwick's paintings (including the one of the cloud giant tower inside Castle Whiterock that started their feud) and some of his clothing.  She tried making a copy of that one using the Copy spell (which failed because that spell only copies text), then gave the original to Chauntessa.  Now that she owned a house in the Noble Quarter, she researched whether titles of nobility could be purchased.  The Kingdom of Morrain was not quite so corrupt as to allow that, however.

Garreth went to Alrux to see if his sword was done yet (it was not), and to place another order for a face mask.  Since he was flush with cash, he paid off the remainder of the sword without waiting for delivery.  Polly ordered a silver coating for her rapier, but since Alrux was already working on Garreth's sword, it had to wait.  Zaber found a fine rapier for sale at Bao's Blades and purchased it for Vulgaris.  Zaber also bought ten barrels of good beer for the stone giants.

Elias got stuck in church.  The rest of the group flew to Castle Whiterock, then headed to Vulgaris's mushroom farm, where Zaber gave her the rapier and gave the giants the beer.  There was a new giant they hadn't met before working for Vulgaris, named Thkirk.

Thkirk had been working for the duergar until he left, based on their general cruelty and poor working conditions.  Garreth asked him questions about the duergar.  He then asked Vulgaris if she knew of any enchanters who needed work.  She didn't, but Thkirk volunteered that the duergar Thane had an enchanter prisoner.

The group continued to the Immense Cavern.  They flew up to the drow stalactite, which was still unoccupied.  They considered stashing some loot there, as it was a pretty good hiding place, but then decided not to.  They then continued to the southwest corner of the cavern, and Zaber and Polly took the passage toward the Bleak Theater.  Listening to a door, they heard heavy footsteps and conversation from the trapped room.  After some discussion, they kicked the door open, and inside was an ettin zombie, with the trap arcing lightning to the zombie, but the zombie apparently unaffected by it.

The ettin zombie charged, as Polly filled it with arrows.  First she crippled one hand, and it dropped one club.  Then she crippled the other hand, and it dropped its other club.  Then she crippled a foot, and it kept coming, slower, with a limp.  Then it got within range of Garreth's katana, and he chopped a leg off.  As the ettin came out the door, the lightning trap stopped zapping it.  Garreth slashed its neck, and the zombie went down for good.

With no Resist Lightning and the trap too far away to disable, the group decided to tunnel around the trapped room again.  Seépravir needed about 40 Shape Earth spells to dig an east-west passage south of the trapped room to intersect the existing north-south passage from the other side of the trapped room to the duergar guard room.  When they broke through the other side, there were no enemies waiting.  Seépravir cast See Invisible on Zaber to check for invisible duergar, and Polly fired a bunch of arrows down the passage, just in case.

Zaber scouted ahead, and found a tripwire.  He disabled it.  As he approached the stairs, he saw a mirror on the ceiling, and an invisible duergar at the bottom of the stairs watching the hallway using two mirrors as a periscope.  Zaber reported back, and Seépravir cast See Invisible on Polly as well.  Zaber tried taunting the duergar into charging up the stairs to his death, but he resisted.

As the group reached the top of the stairs, they heard conversation below, in Undercommon.  The duergar were talking about Zaber and Polly, and waiting for someone named Gora.  Then Zaber heard a door open and close and lock.  Apparently Gora had arrived.  Seépravir cast Magic Resistance on Polly, just in case the vampire tried any more charms.  Then, swarms of bats started coming up the stairs.

Garreth used Elweiss's spear to Great Haste himself.  Seépravir used Create Fire to make a ring around herself, to try to scare bats away.  Everyone waited for the bats to get in range.  When they did, there was much rapid striking and many bats died.  Polly was too armored for the swarms to hurt her.  Zaber took a tiny bit of damage.  And then invisible, enlarged duergar came around the corner and started charging up the stairs.  Polly tried three rapier strikes at the one in front, but he managed to parry, block, and parry them.  Garreth critically failed his Blind Fighting and was sure an invisible duergar was southwest of him, though there wasn't really.  Garreth tried Rapier Wit on the hex, to no avail.  Garreth then tried targeting another duergar, that was actually there, and chopped his shield arm off.  Zaber kept thinning bat swarms.  

Meanwhile Seépravir remarked on how the mass of duergar was a nice target for Mass Daze.  She stopped maintaining a few non-essential spells, then cast See Invisible, then cast Mass Daze on all the duergar she could see.  She rolled pretty well, and only one of the six duergar resisted.

At that point, the fight became not very interesting.  The one duergar that wasn't dazed got stunned with Rapier Wit, then stabbed a lot and killed.  Then all the bat swarms were finished off.  Then two of the five Dazed duergar were Entombed for whatever nefarious future use Seépravir had, while the other three were executed.  Gora-Khan the vampire was nowhere to be seen; he apparently decided to leave after the duergar failed.  There was some quick searching for him, to no avail.  

We stopped at that point due to time.  The group chose to pause in the guard room rather than returning to town and letting the duergar reinforce the guard room again.

GM's Comments:

We spent more time in town than usual, because it had been so long since the last visit.  The battle against the duergar in the guard room wasn't so interesting this time, because Seépravir rolled well on Mass Daze and the duergar failed to resist.  Gora-Khan lived to fight another day, though.

Next time we'll find out what other preparations the duergar made in the week between assaults on the Bleak Theater.

DF Whiterock Session 78: All the Money

Date:

2019-12-20

Weather:

Cold (session entirely underground)

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 388 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 454 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 447 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 459 points

Significant NPCs:

Garreth, Half-Orc Fighter

2 Huge Invisible Animated Scales

Phasm

We started in mid-combat, after 2 huge invisible scales, one with fire in one of its pans, charged at Zaber.  (Polly had entered the west door of the scales' room, with the others just behind her, while Zaber had circled around and entered the east door, which apparently the scales didn't like.  The scales were invisible, but both Polly and Zaber had See Invisible.)

Zaber backed away from the approaching scales, not wanting to be weighed.  Polly fired three arrows at one of them.  Two were dodged, but one left a small mark.  Garreth drew his katana and All-Out Defended, guarding Seépravir, while trying to sense the invisible enemies.  Elias charged toward the general direction of the fight.  Both scales continued approaching Zaber.

Seépravir Great Hasted herself.  Zaber flew back out the east door and slammed the door behind himself.  Polly fired three more arrows at the same scale, this time achieving three solid hits, one of them a critical hit right in the chain.  Garreth continued all-out defending, while asking Polly what she was shooting at.  She responded "Dire scales!  South one has flames!"  Elias asked if the plan was just to charge in, because he was all for that.  Polly said that sounded good, so he continued charging toward the pile of arrows.  (The scales were still invisible.)

With Elias out of the room and the door closed, the scales reversed direction and charged back west, toward Polly and the charging Elias.  Seépravir asked who wanted buffs, then gave Polly and Garreth each a Great Haste.  Zaber, hearing the scales moving away loudly, cracked the door back open to peek.

Polly tried to draw the scales to herself, while firing three more arrows at a scale, and hitting three more times.  Garreth continued defending, while trying to use his blind fighting ability to find the scales.  One of the scales charged Polly with the intent of trampling her.  Elias considered blocking for her, but realized the huge scale would probably break his shield.  Polly retreated and dodged, as the scale became visible.  The second scale also approached, but wasn't quite close enough to attack.

Seépravir cast See Invisible on Garreth, just as the still-invisible scale, which had eaten several arrows, fell over.  Zaber came back into the room, now that the scales weren't near his door.  Polly fast-drew her rapier and started chopping at the pan-chains of the scale that was still standing.  Garreth continued all-out defending, to Seépravir's aggrevation since she had used a Great Haste on him.  Elias smashed the visible and still-standing scale twice with his flail, hitting both times, with one of the hits a double-damage critical that knocked it back and appeared to end its animation.

With both scales apparently defeated, Polly started cutting their chains off with her rapier to make sure they were really dead.  A few seconds later, the invisible one appeared, and the fire on the flaming one went out.  Zaber and Polly started asking questions, like why they only cared about the east door, and why there were scales without a puzzle, while Seépravir rested.  Zaber started trying to use the scales to weigh something, in case that was a puzzle.  There was a bunch of rubble in the room to the south, so he dragged some of that in, until he realized he was doing work.  Then he asked Garreth, who was much stronger and less lazy, to carry rubble for him, and also tip one of the knocked-over scales back upright.  (The other, which Elias had critically smashed with his flail, was too broken to stand up, without major repairs.)  Zaber played with the scales for a few more minutes, then searched the alcoves they came out of, then gave up on the room and put his Invisibility ring back on.

Zaber went back out the east door, then touched the door on the other side of the hallway.  No illusions of halflings appeared, so he tried opening it, but it was locked.  He picked the lock, then opened it.  On the other side of the door was a large room that looked like a natural cavern, with stalagmites and pillars, some of which had marks carved on them.  Zaber investigated the marks, and found that they were about 3' off the floor, which he and Polly thought meant they were probably made by a halfling.

Polly looked closely at another stalagmite -- and then it turned into another Polly, and attacked her!  This totally unexpected event surprised both Zaber and Polly.  (Their friends were still outside the room.)  Fake-Polly attacked Polly with her rapier, and Polly couldn't retreat because of stun, but she successfully Acrobatically Dodged anyway.  Fake-Polly attacked again, and Polly failed to dodge this time, and took a serious enough cut that Polly's Bless spell decided to avert it, and went away.  Fake-Polly attacked a third time (just like real Polly), hit again, and put 19 points of cutting damage into Polly, which failed to stun her.

Zaber and Polly both recovered from mental stun, as their friends outside the room heard the sounds of fighting and started approaching to help, but then Fake-Polly got another turn.  She landed three very deceptive rapier strikes on Polly, but Polly fast-drew her own rapier, then retreated and parried all of them.  Zaber all-out defended, as he wasn't sure which Polly was which and didn't want to attack his friend.  Polly had no such confusion, and so attacked her doppleganger three times (with defensive attacks as she was wounded), but all were dodged or parried.  Garreth, outside the room, started flying toward the battle.  Elias waited until after Seépravir cast Great Haste on him before following.

As the real Polly had stepped back away from her, the fake Polly said "Let me try this bow" then quick-readied her bow and fired two arrows at Polly.  One was a critical hit, so Polly used her Luck to force a reroll into a regular hit.  Badly wounded Polly was at half Dodge, so these hit, and inflicted major wounds and a death check, but Polly stayed up.  She then fired a third arrow at Zaber, which he dodged.  Now Zaber knew which Polly was the enemy, so he tried Slamming her, but she dodged.

Garreth finally flew into the room, saw two of Polly, didn't know which was which, and asked Seépravir to tell him.  Seépravir and Elias also flew into the room.  Not-Polly fired some arrows at Elias, which told them all which one was which.  He blocked one and dodged the others.  Zaber tried another slam, but fake-Polly dodged again.  Elias tried to shield rush the one that had fired arrows at him, missed, then tried flailing her, but she used her Luck to reroll her dodge and avoid the hit.

With all of Polly's friends joining the fight, Fake-Polly felt surrounded, and decided to turn into a small (SM-3) black bird and fly away.  Zaber tried slamming it, but the raven dodged, and told Zaber to eat its shorts.  Polly shot three arrows at the raven, and one was a solid hit, but the raven was tough enough to keep flying.  Seépravir tried Rapier Wit on the raven 9-yard range, not expecting much, but rolled a 3 for a maximum critical success.  The raven thought her joke was so funny it forgot how to fly straight and bounced off the ground, stunned.

Elias flew up and did an all-out attack (double) on the stunned raven, achieving a solid hit with knockback, which caused the raven to slam into Zaber (who chose not to dodge) then bounce off Zaber and land at his feet.  The raven recovered from stun, then Zaber tried grabbing it, but it dodged.

Polly loosed an arrow at the bird, which dodged, then had a chance to hit Zaber, who also dodged.  He asked Zaber if he was okay with this, and he was, so she kept trying, but didn't manage to hit anyone.  Garreth ran up and tried rapid striking at the bird, which retreated out of Zaber's hex and dodged, and then he missed his second attack.

Zaber, not fearing the raven, went for another all-out attack (double) and used Luck to avert a critical failure, and got a critical hit instead.  This achieved knockback and bounced the raven off the cavern wall for more damage, then back into his second flail strike, which got knockback again, and also stunned the raven.  The raven changed form again, into a large oozing blob.  The blob failed to unstun on its turn.

Zaber stabbed the blob with his knife, causing mauve liquid to leak out.  Polly stayed conscious, then stabbed it three times, the final one fatally.  As the phasm died, a Polly torso appeared, then a raven head, but finally its corpse stabilized into its natural form, dead blob on a puddle of mauve pus.

After a bit of rest, Seépravir cast See Secrets on Zaber.  Polly, barely holding on to consciousness, asked Elias for another Bless spell before she even asked for healing.  With a full power item, he was able to give her Bless +2, and she then grabbed the wineskin of healing potions and drank four doses.  Elias suggested burning the phasm, so Seépravir cast Create Fire on its corpse.

Polly, suspicious that more rocks might conceal more shapeshifting horrors, got the pickaxe out of the Bag of Holding and smashed various rocks for a while.  She didn't find any more enemies.  There was a locked door on the west wall.  Zaber picked the lock then opened it.  It led to a north-south passage leading nowhere, with another double door on the far wall.  The passage to nowhere was suspicious so Polly attacked the doors, leaving small dents from bodkin arrows.  Zaber opened the doors.

Beyond was a round room, containing a pretty marble slab on the floor with a poem inscribed in it.  On the far side of the room were two tables, one with three iron containers (box, pyramid, globe), the other with several small knickknacks (wood, iron bar, golden disc, shard of glass, purple fabric, rock).  There was also a lever on the wall.  And there was a secret door, which Zaber easily spotted thanks to See Secrets.  There was also a trap on the secret door, which he disabled.

The poem on the floor was:

“Key, Lock, and Chain

Each I Hid in Vain

It Would Be Such Delight

If You Would Make Things Right

Three Containers I Did Devise

To Hold Anew Each Glassy Prize

With Each Should Go A Token Right

That Once Held My Prize So Tight

Return Them To Their Proper Home

Then Pull Yon Lever, ‘Neath The Dome

Do This Thing, Nothing More

To Open Wide My Treasure’s Door”

It appears the PCs had found a really annoying puzzle.  Presumably the right items had to be placed in the right containers, and then the lever pulled.  Polly put the gold disc in the box then pulled the lever, and nothing happened.  (Zaber thought the trap was supposed to go off there, but he had disabled it, so nothing happened.)  Polly then figured it was probably one item per container, so loaded up another try, to no avail.

Seépravir came into the room and said that she was tired and didn't feel like thinking about the puzzle, but with six items and three containers she could write down every single possible combination for them, and then go back in the hall while they tried them.  She suggested that only one person stay in the room, in case there were more traps.  About ten minutes later, she handed over a piece of parchment with lots of combinations of items and containers written on it, then went down to the end of the hallway to rest and wait to see if anyone needed rescuing.

Polly and Zaber and Elias weren't done thinking about the puzzle yet, and tried a few more combinations, to no avail.  Garreth pulled out the pickaxe and suggested just bashing through the secret door.  Polly said to wait a minute, and first smashed the door to the room, so it couldn't lock them in.  Then she tried prying up the marble slab on the floor, but it was too heavy.  Garreth charged up Power Blow then lifted the marble slab.  Underneath was a small coffin.  Inside were some small bones, but no treasure or clues.  Zaber marked the location of the secret door for Garreth, while Polly put the coffin back.

Garreth started smashing down the secret door.  He broke the pickaxe, and brought the pieces down the hall so Seépravir could cast Repair, then resumed smashing.  Eventually he got the door all the way open, and a horrible wail came out of the room behind the secret door.  Everyone except Seépravir (who was smart enough to be out of range) had to roll against HT-3.  Elias failed, and his Bless was blown off, saving his life in the process.  Everyone else made it.

The small secret room was piled high with silver coins.  Thousands of silver coins.  Zaber started scooping them into the Bag of Holding.  Among the coins were some magic boots and a non-magical silver morningstar, which were also thrown into the bag.  Polly got a shovel for more efficient coin-moving.  With all the coins finally gathered up, and Elias's Bless gone and his power item empty, the group decided to finally head back to Cillamar.  They had finished looting Nimboltin's tomb, though maybe not exactly the way he would have wanted them to.

GM's Comments:

Rules question of the day: can you fast-draw (to parry) at the end of a Do Nothing turn forced by mental stun?  I allowed it, but stated that if the fast-draw failed, that was an automatic failed parry on the first defense.  (As well as the next turn's action spent readying.)

When the phasm assumed raven form and dodged his slam, Zaber's player predicted that the raven would tell him to eat its shorts, before I could even finish typing it.  I guess The Simpsons is still big in the Kingdom of Morrain.

The players failed to solve the puzzle at the end (it was a remember-previous-things-from-the-level puzzle, not a logic puzzle, so when they didn't get it immediately I figured they had no chance), but the pickaxe eventually worked, at the cost of triggering the very nasty second trap, which was inside the secret room so not able to be disabled from outside.  At that point everyone had an active Bless though, so it wasn't as dangerous as it could have been.

The scales were not really much of a threat.  They were strong, but not very fast, so Polly could pretty much just pound them with arrows from a distance until they fell over.  Which is mostly what happened, though Elias landed the killing blow on one of them with a great critical hit.

The phasm was an extremely nasty opponent, in Polly form.  However, Polly survived its initial volley of attacks when she was surprised, and then made a death check and all her stun and consciousness checks for the whole battle.  The moral of the story is to have high HT.  Once they surrounded the phasm and it switched to raven form to retreat, it wasn't nearly as much of a threat.  (It could have gone back to Polly form, but by then it was too busy getting stunned.  All the PCs having Flight made the raven's quick escape ability much less effective, as they were almost as fast as it.)

In hindsight, the phasm probably would have been more effective if it stayed in Polly form and only attacked Polly, so the others couldn't be sure which Polly was which.  But it wasn't a super-genius, so I didn't play it with full GM knowledge, only with the programmed tactics from the adventure, which weren't optimal.

Now that they have a huge pile of silver, I suspect the next week will be consumed with PCs dreaming of things to buy, then failing to find those things because Cillamar is a small town and there are no magic item shops.  We'll see what happens when they go back into the dungeon.