DF Whiterock Session 17: Piercers and Trogs

Date:

2018-08-24


Weather:

Warm,  cloudy


Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 184 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 229 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 217 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 205 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 239 points


Significant NPCs:
Lord Granger Flitwick, noble and artist
Lady Chauntessa, inn owner
20 Piercers
9 Troglodyte Warriors and assorted Troglodyte non-combatants


The party met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake.  Elias had visited the temples of Elyr and Justicia, but again failed to find an exorcist willing to travel to Castle Whiterock.  Ibizaber and Garreth had been around town, looking for information and beer, but hadn't found much information.

Garreth was able to commission a penetrating katana at Bao's Blades.  Elias tried to purchase some heavy dwarven plate armor from Alrux at the Sign of the Silver Armiger, but did not like the asking price.

Lord Granger Flitwick offered to sell copies of his drawings from inside Castle Whiterock to Lady Chauntessa, which rubbed the party the wrong way, since they thought they had exclusive rights, even though Flitwick had explicitly refused to sell those.  Some threats were exchanged and Ibizaber stalked Flitwick to find out where he lived, but Elias eventually talked the others down.  Seépravir did some research on Flitwick and his family at the Hall of Worms, looking for dirt.

Polly, bored of all this town nonsense, talked the others into going back to Castle Whiterock to kill more bad guys.  It took them a long time to hike there, because they were pushing a heavy wheelbarrow, but the weather was good, and nothing accosted them on the way.

Elias cast another Bless on Ibizaber, since the previous one had been used up saving him from a crossbow bolt.  Seépravir cast Dark Vision on everyone, Keen Vision on Ibizaber, and Lighten Burden on Elias, and they went down two flights of stairs to the level where they had fought the orc zombies.  They opened the secret door leading to more stairs down, Seépravir cast Invisibility and Mage Stealth on Ibizaber, and they went downstairs with Zaber scouting ahead.

The stairs opened into a large cave, with stalactites on the ceiling and a few small piles of faintly glowing rocks arranged in kind of a double-square pattern.  Invisible Zaber went forward to check out the rocks, and saw that they were covered with some kind of plant life or fungus that emitted light.  Polly though the pattern of rocks was interesting, and asked Zaber to stand in one place while she stood in another to complete all the corners of a double square, but nothing happened.  Then Seépravir wandered across the middle of the room, and a piercer dropped on her from above with total surprise, wounding her pretty badly but not enough to be life-threatening.  Garreth ran over to help, and Elias lifted his shield over his head in case there were more.

While Polly filled the first piercer with arrows, keen-eyed Ibizaber scanned the ceiling for more, and found a bunch, which he then called out to the others.  (He couldn't point effectively because he was invisible, but he yelled out general locations.)  A battle then ensued, where Ibizaber found piercers, Polly rapidly murdered piercers at range with her bow, while Garreth stood wherever he thought piercers were going to drop, waited for them, and then killed them with his katana in flight.  One almost got Elias, but he had his shield up and it bounced off.  Eventually, twenty piercers died.

Garreth started collecting dead piercers, but found that they exuded some kind of caustic fluid.  It didn't damage him through his heavy leather gloves, but he thought better of picking them up.  Elias healed Seépravir, everyone rested a bit, and then the group started exploring two exits from the cave, to the northeast and southeast.

Ibizaber started down the southeastern passage, but then saw something suspicious on the floor, which turned out to be a pit trap covered with debris.  He thought about triggering it to explore inside, but decided it would make a lot of noise, and chose to jump over instead.  Four of the group jumped over the pit, but then Polly saw a second pit on the other side.  Elias was stuck, as he couldn't jump far enough to clear either the pit without a running start, and had no space to run.  He asked Seépravir to come cast Levitate on him, while the three better jumpers jumped over the second pit, and found a third pit.  They jumped over that one too, and found no fourth pit.  Seépravir Levitated herself and Elias and the wheelbarrow across, and then needed to rest.

While the group was resting in the tunnel, three troglodytes with javelins and clubs came around the corner and ambushed them.  They led with their stench attack, which everyone managed to resist, and Polly resisted so well that it turned out she was naturally immune to these troglodyte's stench.  Then they followed up with some thrown javelins.  Despite being surprised, Elias managed to block one with his shield.  Another troglodyte horribly missed Garreth.  The third hit Polly with his javelin, but not very solidly.

The group recovered from surprise quickly, as the troglodytes readied their clubs and stepped toward the intruders.  Polly shot one in the vitals twice and killed it.  Ibizaber pulled out his long knife.  Garreth tried chopping another one, but it dodged.  Seépravir, not really a fighter, and a bit behind the others, took a little while to notice the ambush.

Polly was suspicious of the wall behind the group, and asked Zaber to guard it, while she shot another troglodyte.  Zaber checked it out, and found that Polly's suspicions were right and there was a secret door there.  Garreth chopped up the third troglodyte, Elias cast Stop Bleeding on Polly, and the group rested again, then went up the secret passage behind the secret door.  It ended in a dead end, which seemed like an obvious spot for another secret door, which was there.  Ibizaber opened it, and it turned out to lead back near the room with the piercers, just a secret bypass passage around the one with the pits.

The group explored the passage to the northeast, and found a big pile of rubble.  It looked like it would take a while to clear, and that sounded too much like hard work to some, so they decided to go back south and keep exploring.  Elias and Polly got a bit too far ahead of the others, and ran into another ambush, this time six troglodytes.  This time the troglodytes failed to achieve surprise.  Their stench didn't affect anyone too badly, and Polly started shooting while Elias started smashing with his morningstar.  They each took a troglodyte down before their friends caught up, and then the numbers were on their side.

Garreth missed one with a thrown sai (with Continual Light on it), Polly shot another couple, and Seépravir cast Smoke to mess up the last two.  (She botched her casting badly, with so many spells on, but used Luck to fix that.)  Elias hit the one in front but not very hard, then shield rushed the one in back to knock it prone. Ibizaber moved into position to finish the one in front off, and then Garreth ignored dibs and chopped its head off with his katana.  Polly ran around the smoke to shoot the one that Elias had knocked down, and that was all the moving trogs.

At this point the passage was very stinky with dead and unconscious troglodytes, but Seépravir remembered the orcish recipe to harvest troglodyte stench organs and make stenchpots out of them, and started cutting.  She got most of the stench organs out intact, but pierced a couple, which made the smell even worse.  Elias had to hide in the corner to get away from it.  Eventually the butchery was complete, everyone rested, and Seépravir cast Invisibility and Mage-Stealth on Ibizaber and Polly so they could scout ahead.

They found a huge cave, with many small cave alcoves coming off the sides, which appeared to be a great troglodyte living area.  A few noncombatant troglodytes were spotted on the far side, but they ran away and the group decided (after some debate) not to hunt them down.  The two invisible scouts found various primitive pottery and stone furniture, but no treasure.  One side cave contained meat, corpses of cave lizards and sheep or goats and orcs.  One had some graffiti in Common: "Bronwyn was here."  They also found two passages leaving the big cave, one to the west and one to the south.

The scouts went back to the others to report their findings, and, after some debate, the group decided to go back to the northeast and clear the rubble.  It took about an hour, with Garreth and Polly doing most of the rock-moving, Elias smashing rocks with his Penetrating Morningstar (which worked better than you'd expect), and the others standing guard.  Finally, there was a wide enough passage to squeeze through, and they did, with Ibizaber in the lead.

They found another cave, long and narrow, this one with a weird flowstone rock formation to the south, leading to some kind of stone pipe organ built into the rock wall, complete with stone piano bench and stone keyboard.  Unlike the rest of the caves, this one did not smell like troglodytes.  When Ibizaber approached the organ, some moaning speech in a language nobody understood came out, like something was trapped in there.  Seépravir's best guess based on the windiness of the language was that it might be Auran, but she wasn't really sure.  Nobody had any spells to speak or understand random languages, so communication seemed impossible.  Seépravir tried playing the magical jade flute that they had found earlier, and whatever was inside the organ said some other things that nobody understood in response, but it didn't have any obvious effect.  Ibizaber tried playing the organ, which had no definite effect.  He found a bump on the piano bench, but pushing on it didn't have any clear effect either.

The group decided to go back to town and come back with a way to speak and understand more languages.  They made it out of Castle Whiterock and back to Cillamar with no significant difficulties.


GM's Comments:

I thought we might see some violence toward Lord Flitwick over the rights to his drawings, but somehow calmer heads prevailed.

Polly was onto something with the positioning of the glowing rocks, but nobody knew it was piercers above, until one dropped on Seépravir.  Twenty of them was a lot, but the piercers had no tactical coordination, and the PCs were lucky to have positioned themselves so that not many piercers got to attack at once.  Once the group stopped panicking and figured out how to group together and let Garreth kill them as they dropped, and Polly kill the rest at range, it was not much of a challenge.

The first few troglodytes also achieved surprise (very difficult against high-Perception PCs who tend to send invisible and silent scouts ahead, but they got lucky while the wizard was messing around levitating things over the pits), but the one javelin hit was a weak one, and then the PCs recovered from mental stun quickly, and five on three wasn't a fair fight.

A couple of PCs wandered ahead, briefly leading to a six-on-two ambush, which could have been fatal, but this time the troglodytes failed to achieve surprise, and Elias and Polly did a good job fighting them off until their friends arrived.

The group failed to solve the mystery of the stone organ, but I suspect they'll be back next time with Gift of Tongues to figure out whatever's in there.

DF Whiterock Session 16: Art!

Date:
2018-08-17


Weather:
Warm,  cloudy


Player Characters:
Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 179 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 224 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 212 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 200 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 234 points


Significant NPCs:
Lord Granger Flitwick, noble and artist
Hugin, mercenary fighter
11 Orcs of the White Roc tribe
Green Slime


Four of the party met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar. Polly was off in the woods somewhere, and Bernard was still out of town.

Ibizaber had spent part of the week carousing for rumors, and heard that the symbol of the swan is used by the local thieves' guild.

Elias had checked with the temple of Elyr, and found they were concerned about the poor refugees from the Warlands entering Cillamar.  He had also checked with the temple of Justicia to see if they had anyone available to help exorcise a temple, but all of their holy warriors were smiting other evil.

Seépravir had researched mining at the Hall of Worms, and was convinced that the tunnels that the White Roc orcs had dug were looking for something, rather than mining for minerals.  She asked if Chauntessa wanted to come to Castle Whiterock to see the murals of cloud giants and white birds, but Chauntessa was unable to leave her Inn. 

Seépravir then came up with the idea of hiring an artist to copy the murals for Chauntessa.  After some asking around, the group found that Lord Granger Flitwick, a local minor noble often found drinking in the Inn, had some artistic talent and was willing to go on a little adventure.  They also found that Hugin, a mercenary they had previously rescued from orcs, was available to go along as Flitwick's bodyguard.  The negotiated deal was that Flitwick would come along for free, owned the originals of anything he drew, but would be willing to make copies at a reasonable price.

Flitwick got his horse and his art supplies, everyone else got their gear, and the group traveled to Castle Whiterock.  They made it there unmolested, Flitwick left his horse in the castle's stable, and everyone proceeded down two levels.  Seépravir cast her full ensemble of scouting spells (Dark Vision, Invisibility, Mage-Stealth, Keen Vision) on Ibizaber, and he went off by himself for a while, making sure he knew the way to the tower, and that there were no hostile creatures around.

Ibizaber came back, and the group followed his voice (since he was invisible) to the tower.  Once they got there, Flitwick started sketching the mosaics on the bottom level.  Ibizaber got bored waiting, and was persuaded not to open the giant iron doors while the artist was working, so went exploring a bit more.  He eventually found a blue gem, with some green dripping slime on the ceiling above it.  He went back to get Seépravir, who followed Ibizaber back to that area and Apportated the gem away from the green slime.

Flitwick finished his drawings of the bottom level, and went up the ladder to the huge middle level of the tower, with its great spiral staircase surrounded by murals on the walls.  Hugin, Garreth, and Elias also came up, to guard him and watch.

Eventually, the art was all done, and the group was ready for Ibizaber to open the iron doors.  They were too heavy for him though, so Garreth helped.  They were also too heavy for Garreth, and Hugin also helped, and eventually they managed to open the doors.  Behind was just a blank stone wall, though.  It looked like the tower was somehow thrust into the ground here, and the current entrance to the tower was dug through the back wall, and the actual front door didn't lead to anything.

With Flitwick's work done, he and Hugin went back up to the stables at ground level, to rest and watch his horse and wait for the rest of the group.  Polly showed up, late as usual.  Everyone else went to the northwest corner of the level, where they thought there might be some places they hadn't explored.  They found the passage past the desecrated temple of Justicia continued south a bit, ending near door leading east and a stairway up to the west.

Ibizaber listened to the door, and heard sounds of humanoid conversation inside.  Everyone else was watching him, when suddenly a barrel came bouncing down the stairs.  First Garreth, then Seépravir (needing Luck), then Elias, and finally Ibizaber all heard it coming, and all managed to dodge it.  (Polly was a bit north of the others, out of the line of fire.)  The barrel crashed into the door, and some yelling in Orc came through the door.  It appeared the group was between enemies on both sides.

Polly charged up the stairs, fired an arrow into the darkness, and didn't hit anything.  Garreth and  Ibizaber and Elias set up an ambush next to the door.  Seépravir dropped 4 spells (leaving 7 on) and cast Smoke on an area centered on the door, including some unseen space on the other side.

Polly kept going up the stairs, saw an orc, and shot him, taking him down.  There were four more orcs up there, with crossbows and flails and barrels to roll down the steps.  Garreth decided to follow Polly upstairs, leaving the other three guarding the door.  An orc threw a barrel at Polly, but she saw it coming and jumped it, as did Garreth when it reached him.  This one stopped at the bottom of the stairs, before the other three had to dodge it.  The remaining three orcs upstairs all aimed crossbows at Polly.

Garreth threw a sai (with very bright Continual Light on it) at one of the orcs, and hit, but didn't do much damage.  Polly shot another orc.  All three orcs fired their crossbows at Polly.  Two missed (and the one that had Garreth behind Polly also missed Garreth), and one was an accurate shot that Polly acrobatically dodged.

The door opened, behind the smoke.  An orc ran through it, right next to Ibizaber, who was hiding behind the smoke waiting to backstab.  He stabbed the orc in the face, and the orc failed its stun roll by enough to be knocked out instantly.  Seépravir started casting Death Vision.

The orcs upstairs dropped their crossbows and readied their flails.  Polly shot at another one, but he dodged it.  Garreth fast-drew his katana and tried to chop off both of an orc's arms with a Rapid Strike, but the orc retreated and dodged both blows.  With a reach disadvantage, the orc needed a Committed Attack to do a two-hex step to get close enough to swing his flail at Garreth, but Garreth retreated and dodged in turn.  Another orc ran up behind Garreth, trying to surround him.

An Alchemist's Fire bomb that someone had flung blind came flying through the smoke and the open door, and didn't hit anyone, but left an area of floor in front of the door on fire.  Another orc came through the door, and Ibizaber stabbed him, missing his face but accidentally hitting his (well-armored) torso.  Seépravir stopped casting Death Vision and cast Stun on the orc instead, failing because of the penalty for lots of spells on.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Polly shot and dropped another orc.  And Garreth chopped the weapon off clean off another orc.  It fell into the well in the center of the room, with a loud splash.  Garreth suggested that the orc go get it.

Ibizaber tried stabbing the orc in the face again, and this this time hit the face and stunned him, also knocking him down and causing him to drop his flail.  Elias followed up with his morningstar, and the knocked out and stunned and weaponless orc failed to dodge and was knocked out.

The one-armed orc upstairs decided to keep fighting, by trying to kick a barrel at Polly.  He missed.  This made Garreth angry, and he said that would cost him that leg.   True to his word, Garreth attacked the leg that kicked the barrel.  Initially the orc rolled a critical success on his Dodge, causing Garreth to critically miss, but Garreth used Luck to make the orc reroll, and the dodge failed, and the leg was crippled.  At that point there were no armed orcs left upstairs, so Garreth decided to help out downstairs.

Seépravir decided to cast Shape Fire and used it to move the hex of Alchemist's Fire onto the unconscious orc that had foolishly come through the door.  Adding to the already severe wounds the orc had taken from Ibizaber and Elias, this killed it, probably Seépravir's first direct kill in this game.  (She has a ton of assists though.)

No other orcs came through the door, so Seépravir dropped the Smoke and continued using Shape Fire to move the fire into the room, trying to burn more orcs with it.  The others weren't unconscious on the ground, though, so they weren't such easy targets.  One was hit, but the fire damage wasn't enough to penetrate his armor.  Polly, having just reached the bottom of the stairs, fired an arrow at a recently revealed orc, initially missed badly, used her Luck, and then rolled a critical hit that knocked out the orc.

Ibizaber ran into the room to try to stab an orc, and a waiting orc with a crossbow shot him.  He failed his Dodge initally, used Luck, failed to dodge twice more (he chose not to Drop and Dodge), and took a solid crossbow shot that would have wrecked his day.  At that point his Bless came into play, turned the hit into a miss, and was dispelled.  The bolt kept going at Seépravir behind Ibizaber, who failed to dodge, but used her Luck and dodged.  The bolt then continued into a barrel, but nothing interesting came out of it.  (Ibizaber was hoping it was full of booze.)

Elias was in the room, and the remaining three orcs ganged up on him.  The first fired a crossbow bolt, which he blocked with his shield.  The second swung a flail, which he dodged.  The third swung a flail, which he parried with his morningstar, despite the penalty for parrying flails.  Seépravir cast another Smoke, covering all the orcs around Elias, but not Elias.

Polly shot and downed another orc.  Elias used Divine Grace to give himself +4 to DX for 9 seconds.  The last few of orcs swung flails at Seépravir and Polly and Elias, who dodged and dodged and was missed.  And then Divinely Graceful Elias killed one, and the final two surrendered.  Surprisingly, the last two were allowed to run away, after having their gear taken.  I guess Garreth and Polly, the Bloodlust twins, were too sleepy to argue this time.

We were out of time, so that was the end of the session.  The group returned to town.  They had gotten Flitwick to paint pictures of the mosaics and murals in the tower, and had cleared two more rooms of orcs and earned a small fortune in scale and mail armor, flails, and crossbows.  (Elias's Very Wealthy advantage means that he can sell loot at 100% of book value instead of the usual 40%.)


GM's Comments:

Hiring an artist to draw pictures was an interesting move.  We'll see next time what the pictures are worth.

Everyone has Luck, and almost everyone needed it this session.  Everyone also has Bless (Elias can cast it), and it saved Ibizaber from a nasty crossbow wound.  It's really hard for the orcs on this level to hit the PCs.

I thought the orcs throwing barrels down the stairs was amusing, but in practice the PCs dodged them all and then Garreth and Polly murdered the barrel-throwing orcs.

Smoke is a nasty spell.  Blocks all vision past one hex, plus causes rolls to avoid blindness and nausea.  Seépravir cast it on an area that spanned both sides of a door, which felt a bit wonky, but I don't think there's a rule against it, so I allowed it.  (She knew there were enemies on the other side, so it wasn't completely cheesy, just a question of whether a closed door should affect casting area spells through it)

Divine Grace is really good.  Elias used it kind of late in the fight, so only got to demolish one orc with it.  I suspect he'll get more use out of it in the future.  Weapon Master is also really good, but Garreth was already wrecking these orcs without it, so it didn't make a really obvious difference.

The PCs have now explored all of that level that they have found, so they'll probably have to go deeper next time.  Stay tuned.

DF Whiterock Session 15: Rocks and Zombies

Date:

2018-08-10

Weather:

Warm, mostly cloudy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 174 points

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 207 points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 197 points

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 229 points

Significant NPCs:

Katanya Glimer, Gnome sorceress

Durkerle, Dwarf cleric of Danethar

Cookie, Ogre bouncer

Or'dimisas of Kassantia, Human sage of Delvyr

2 Rasthnums, spiky poisonous rocks

7 Orc Zombies

After a week of training and selling loot and looking for information, Elias, Ibizaber, and Seépravir met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar.  (Bernard and Garreth were out of town on other business, and Polly was out doing something in the woods.)

Seépravir then taken the sheet of paper written in Gnomish, which the party had found in the laboratory of an orcish alchemist, to Katanya for translation.  Kat revealed that it was some kind of advertising flier for a gnomish institution of mechanical learning called the Clockwork Academy.

Seépravir had visited the Hall of Worms, a library and temple of Delvyr, looking for information about the Ring of Water Breathing (and possibly other abilities that Analyze Magic wasn't able to discern) that Nemoura the nixie had given the group in exchange for killing a giant crayfish.  The sage Or'dimisas was quite impressed with Seépravir's knowledge of Thaumatology, and allowed her free admission to the library as a professional courtesy.  But there was no information about the ring to be found.  The library did contain a book that mentioned the Clockwork Academy, but only in passing.  Its location was specified as "near Castle Whiterock."

Ibizaber had visited most of the taverns in Cillamar, and someone had told him that a secretive league of arcanists congregates at the castle ruins on moonless nights to conduct terrible rituals.  But he couldn't remember who told him that.  The moon was currently about half full.

Durkerle showed up to collect his share of the loot from the previous delve, then left to serve Danethar in another town.

Elias needed someone to cock his overstrength hand crossbow, and Garreth wasn't around, so he got Cookie, the Inn's ogre bouncer, to do it in exchange for a small tip.  Then the three left a message for their friends that they were heading for Castle Whiterock, and set off with Elias pushing a wheelbarrow.

This time they reached the Castle without incident, and then went down through one locked door (they still had the key), two secret doors, and two flights of stairs to the level that had been occupied by the White Roc orcs.  Seépravir cast 11 spells: 3 Dark Vision, 3 Invisibility, 3 Mage-Stealth (which allows talking), a Keen Vision, and a Lighten Burden.  And the invisible and silent (except when talking to each other to make sure they were still in formation) group started exploring the level, looking for anything they missed before.

Eventually, Ibizaber found some writing on the floor in Orc: a rune and an arrow.  None of the three could read it, so Elias cast Gift of Letters, which revealed that the rune said "Danger".  Thus warned, the three went that way anyway.  At that point, a spined rock on the ceiling (a creature that Quintus the alchemist had identified as a rasthnum, and which Polly the elf had identified as containing poison by drinking said poison), tried to fall on Ibizaber's head.  (How it detected him, they weren't sure.)  Zaber saw it coming and jumped back, and then a fight ensued.  Seépravir dropped some spells to reduce her "spells on" casting penalty, and tried to Glue the rock to the floor, but failed.  Ibizaber tried stabbing the rock with his knife, but it dodged.  Elias smashed the rock with his very fancy morningstar, and did some serious damage.  Seépravir tried Glue again, and it worked the second time.  The severely wounded rasthnum stopped struggling against the Glue and reverted to acting like a rock.

...At which time a second rasthnum had moved into position and also tried to drop on Zaber's head.  He dodged again, Elias crushed it with his flail for excellent damage, and it quickly stopped struggling.  Then the looters went to work extracting treasure: Ibizaber removed the poison from both rasthnum into empty vials, Seépravir borrowed a scalpel from Elias and de-spined one rasthnum, and then Polly, who had just come bounding down the hallway, removed the spine from the other one.

After a quick rest, Seépravir cast Dark Vision on Polly (to avoid having any lights to give them away), and recast Invisibility on herself and Ibizaber, and they resumed exploring.  Far to the northwest, the group found two doors they hadn't seen before, and also, nearby, the desecrated altar to Justicia that they had tried cleaning up before, before getting distracted by a fight between Durkerle and a rasthnum.  This time, the whole group tried cleaning up the altar, with instruction from Elias.  Nobody knew Exorcism, but they figured some elbow grease and heartfelt prayers couldn't hurt.  They also moved some orcish archery targets out of the room with the altar, as disrespectful, though Polly couldn't resist shooting one first (and wasted a critical hit on it).

With the altar cleaned up as much as possible, they proceeded to the southern door, which Zaber checked for traps, found was unlocked, and opened.  Inside was a huge bed, about 12 feet long.  Also a desk covered with papers written in Orc.    Polly looked under the best, and found a chest.  Ibizaber checked it for traps, didn't find any, picked the lock, and got a sheet of fire in the face.  Oops.  Fortunately it only singed him a little bit.

The chest contained some coins, a small pretty box which in turn contained a silver and onyx necklace of a bird, and a magical silver and jade flute.  Zaber tried playing the flute and made a high-pitched flatulent noise.  Seépravir tried playing the flute and made a few pleasant notes.  Nothing obviously magical happened either time.  Seépravir found a secret door in the southern wall, which led to a small room containing a heavy stone model of Castle Whiterock.  The upper level looked familiar, but the model showed a lower level that did not, which looked like it would be under the lake now.  Seépravir also searched the chest for a false bottom, and found one, which contained a parchment with a few runes of Orcish.

Having taken everything except the (very heavy) model castle, the group continued to the northern door.  This one was locked.  Zaber picked the lock, and opened the door.  This revealed a large, roughly circular, room, with niches in the walls, containing dead orcs.  Or, rather, undead zombie orcs, which started coming out of their niches to attack.

Polly started the fight by shooting an arrow into an orc zombie in mail, and downing it.  Ibizaber (still invisible and silent) snuck around behind a zombie to the north to backstab it.  Elias got his flail ready to smash zombie skulls.  Seépravir invisibly moved into position.  And the zombies all charged forward.

Then Polly unluckily dumped her whole quiver of cutting arrows.  She decided not to use her Luck and just to rely on impaling arrows for the fight.  (They're not as good against zombies.)  Zaber backstabbed a zombie in the foot and scored really good damage, cutting its foot off.  The zombie hit the floor.  Elias whomped on a zombie with his flail.  Seépravir noticed that the nearest zombie was wearing a silver necklace, decided it might be important, and tried Apportation to filch it.  This succeeded but didn't have any noticeable effect on the zombie.

Polly fired a couple of arrows that zombies were lucky to dodge.  Zaber, happy with his foot attack, tried it again on a second zombie and chopped off another foot, but now had two one-footed  angry zombies crawling at him.  Elias was fighting two zombies, but managed to block two attacks and parry one.  (His fancy morningstar is Dwarven, allowing parrying after attacking.)

Not liking the two-on-one odds, Ibizaber decided to All-Out Defend (Dodge) and run away from the crawling zombies a bit, so he could return and fight one at a time.  Elias, fighting two zombies, took the wounded one down with a second solid flail hit to even the odds.  Polly and Seépravir and two more zombies were in another melee, but both Polly and Seépravir dodged every attack that came close, and Polly kept shooting arrows.  Seépravir decided Polly wasn't shooting fast enough and cast Great Haste on her.

Eventually Elias finished his last zombie, Polly took down both of the standing zombies near her, and all that remained were the two one-footed zombies crawling around after Ibizaber.  They were slow enough for Polly to dispatch from a distance at her leisure, but both Ibizaber and Elias felt the need to come within range and get another shot in.  Then all the zombies were dead for good.  Each had a necklace, several had maces and tattered leather armor, and one had a mail shirt.  Searching room revealed some stairs down.  But the group had enough treasure that they decided to return to town, and save those stairs for another time.

GM's Comments:

Invisibility plus Mage-Stealth plus Dark Vision is a great combination for stealthy exploration.  With all of them up, the party can explore with a small chance of being detected, but still talk to each other.  (Of course talking increases the chances of being heard.)  But with only one mage casting all these spells, eventually the penalty for number of spells on gets ugly.

The three PCs who started the session "forgot to bring any damage".  No Garreth, no Bernard, no Polly.  But Elias and his super-flail actually put a pretty good dent in the rasthnum.  Seépravir's Glue spell wasn't really needed.

Polly rolled 18 on a Fast-Draw (arrow) roll, a critical failure which spilled the whole quiver.  I think everyone expected her to use Luck, but she preferred to save it for something more lethal, and just used her other quiver of arrows.  That worked out okay, since the zombies weren't super-tough.

Elias has Bless, so now the entire party (including Elias: you can't Bless yourself but there was a scroll) is running around with Bless, for +1 on every die roll.  Plus when something horrible happens to one of them, the Bless will prevent it then go away.  The combination of Bless, Luck, Seépravir's combo of stealth spells, careful exploration, and good luck on defense rolls means that nobody took any damage this session, except Ibizaber getting burned a bit by the fire trap on the chest.  I think that despite their low starting point totals, this group is starting to feel a bit overpowered for the current dungeon level.  But, they just found some stairs down, so we'll see if that continues.

DF Whiterock Session 14: The Bigger They Are Splat

 Date:

2018-07-27

Weather:

Warm, mostly cloudy

Player Characters:

Bernard (threethreethree), Human Fighter, 170 points
Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 170 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 201 (+15) points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 192 (+11) points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 176 (+15) points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 216 (+5) points

Significant NPCs:

Durkerle, Dwarven Cleric
2 Orc Barbarians of the White Roc tribe
Drugila, Giant Orc Wizard of the White Roc tribe
Nemoura, Nixie Princess
Giant Crayfish


We rejoined the PCs in mid-battle, against two orc barbarians and Drugila, Giant Orc leader of the White Roc tribe.  One of the barbarians was down, stunned, and disarmed.  The other one was barely wounded and fighting Garreth.  And Drugila was Levitating and throwing boulders.

The unstunned orc barbarian tried to smash Garreth with his flail, but Garreth was waiting and unleased a Rapid Strike with his katana as soon as the orc came within range.  The first stroke hit and did enough damage to slow the orc.  That hurt his Dodge enough that the second stroke also hit.   The orc wasn't down or stunned, but he was badly injured, and failed to hit Garreth.

Polly fired an arrow at Drugila, who dodged in mid-air, and retaliated with a boulder.  Polly acrobatically dodged the boulder in return.  (She initially missed her Acrobatics roll, but used her Luck to reroll.)  The downed orc barbarian was in the boulder's path behind Polly, but was not hit.

Meanwhile Seépravir invisibly snuck toward Drugila, Ibizaber invisibly and silently snuck nowhere in particular, and Bernard (who had just arrived on the scene, and was given directions to the battle by rear guard Durkerle) ran toward the fight holding his crossbow.

Garreth took another double-shot at his wounded opponent, and hit once, doing a bit of damage.  Seépravir, with an uncomfortable number of spells maintained, dropped all the spells she had on Zaber (Dark Vision, Invisibility, and Hush), then cast Missile Shield on boulder-target Polly.  Zaber responded to his sudden visibility by diving behind some rubble.  Polly took another shot at Drugila, but missed.  Drugila threw her last boulder at Polly, but missed due to Missile Shield.

Garreth took another rapid strike on the orc barbarian, who had waited and got a flail attack in first.  The orc failed to injure Garreth, and Garreth made the orc bleed a little more, still failing to stun him.  Seépravir cast Blur on Garreth to make him hard to hit.  The badly wounded orc that was fighting Garreth went Berserk, and did a double All Out Attack, but Garreth dodged the first blow (though he needed to use his Luck) and the second attack missed because of the Blur.  Polly drilled Drugila through the breastplate into the vitals with a bodkin arrow, making a serious wound.  Drugila responded by casting Darkness around herself.  Unfortunately for her, three of the PCs had Dark Vision, so it only really helped against Bernard.

Garreth took another attack on the defenseless orc barbarian who'd just All-Out Attacked, and did enough damage to kill him.  The second orc barbarian, who'd been badly wounded last session, passed out.  Polly put another arrow into Drugila for serious damage and a stun.  Drugila came out of stun after losing a turn, and Bernard, unable to see Drugila, aimed at the darkness.

Realizing Polly could see her, Drugila cast Missile Shield on herself.  Seépravir made her Thaumatology roll, recognized the spell, and tipped Polly off (in Elvish, so Drugila wouldn't know, but Bernard didn't know either).  Seépravir cast Levitation on Garreth, Polly headed for the ladder up, and Bernard kept aiming at the darkness hoping Drugila would come out.

Drugila reached the trap door in the ceiling, and opened it, but this meant leaving her area of darkness, giving Bernard a shot with his crossbow.  Missile Shield meant it had no chance of hitting, though.  Seépravir had been levitating Garreth up, and he finally got into reach of Drugila's feet, rolled a critical hit, and chopped one of them off cleanly with his Katana.  He then stabbed her other foot, not as critically.  And finally, he levitated up some more into torso range, landed a huge stab, and Drugila died.  That meant her Levitation went away, and she fell.  Luckily for Seépravir, she fell the other way, not onto the elf's head.  Splat!

With the battle over, there was time to search the tower.  This revealed mosaics on the walls, recently cleaned, showing scenes of orcs and cloud giants working together to kill humans and elves and dwarves and gnomes.  Also a huge set of iron double doors, which the party ignored.

The whole party (except for rear guards Durkerle and Ibizaber) climbed up the ladder or levitated to the next floor.  This revealed the 200-foot-tall second level of the tower, with a huge spiral staircase, and more mosaics on the walls.  These focused on a cloud giant with a giant flail, a huge iron crown, and white birds whose size varied from small enough to ride on the giant's shoulder to large enough for the giant to ride.

After a long climb up the staircase, the group reached a room featuring an altar, a prayer mat, a wood elf in a cage, and a prone one-armed giant skeleton.  The elf pleaded for rescue, whlie the skeleton started trying to punch anyone within reach (and that was pretty far).  Polly started filling the skeleton with arrows, Bernard prodded it with a spear and tried to keep it off Polly, and Seépravir worked on rescuing the elf, while Garreth stood back.  The skleton's huge hand almost got Polly once, but she dodged it, and then Bernard gave it a good stab and taunt.

The skeleton's attacks and dodges had been mostly ineffective due to the penalty for being prone, so it finally decided to get up.  It was wobbly and only had one arm, though, and lost its balance and fell.  The damage from the fall was enough to finish it.

Seépravir found the key to the elf's cage under the prayer rug, unlocked the cage, and the elf stepped out and introduced himself as Elias, a cleric.   He then proceded to recover his equipment from a chest nearby.  There was a nice silk banner of a diving white bird of prey, and a curious gigantic iron crown, and the group took both back down.

Garreth wanted to find the water creature that Zaber had spotted before, so Zaber led the way through twisty tunnels to the submerged cave.  The little green lady was still there, and spoke Elvish.  A conversation with Seépravir revealed that she was a nixie named Nemoura.  She had been exploring various submerged caves when she ran into a giant crayfish, which chased her until she reached a passage too narrow for it, which led to this cavern.  She could not go back out without fighting the crayfish, which was too tough for her.  She had charmed some orcs which had visited the cave, and sent them to fight the crayfish, but the crayfish had killed them, and then other orcs had plugged the entrance to this cave with a boulder too heavy for the nixie to move.  So she's been trapped in this cave, between a rock and a hard crayfish, for a few weeks, eating most of the small fish in the cave.  She offered to cast Water Breathing on anyone brave enough to fight the crayfish.

Garreth, who had a Ring of Swimming, volunteered.  Nobody else wanted to fight the crayfish, but invisible Seépravir accepted a Water Breathing spell to follow and help Garreth.  They started down the passage to the crayfish, then Seépravir cast Blur and Great Haste on Garreth.  He swam at the crayfish and tried to stab it with his Katana, but long swung weapons don't work so well underwater, and he missed a lot. The crayfish tried to grapple Garreth with its huge claws, but he dodged.  Garreth pulled out a knife and tried stabbing the crayfish with it, but barely penetrated its hard shell. Then he noticed a ledge in the room, sticking out of the water, and decided to climb up there and try to lure the crayfish into coming out of the water, where his weapons were more effective.

The crayfish was not a genius, and exposed part of its body to Garreth's greatsword.  (He had dropped his katana but had the greatsword as a backup weapon.)  With Great Haste he landed several blows, severely wounded the crayfish, and the death spiral began.  The crayfish started trying to swim away, but it was slowed by its wounds, and Garreth was quite fast in the water due to the Ring of Swimming, and kept after it, landed a few more blows, stunned it, and killed it.  He chopped off one crayfish claw (good eatin'!) to bring back to the others, and he and Seépravir swam back to the others.

Nemoura was overjoyed that the crayfish was dead, handed Garreth her ring as a reward, and swam off.  Seépravir detected that the ring was magic, and it resized itself to fit Garreth's finger as he tried it on.  Garreth so no effect from the ring, so he handed it to Ibizaber, who swam around (badly) while wearing the ring until his head went under, and he figured out that it gave him Water Breathing.

Satisfied with their delve, the group decided to start grabbing treasure and headed for Cillamar.  One cleric (Durkerle) was leaving the group, but it appeared that Elias might be willing to take his place.


GM's Comments:

The fight against the two orc barbarians and the levitating, boulder-throwing Drugila was a pretty good one, but they just couldn't hit the PCs very often, and when they did, the PCs used Luck.  High health and good rolls to stay up meant the fight lasted a while, but Garreth and Polly just landed a lot of damage, and eventually all three foes went down.

The prone giant skeleton would have done a lot of damage if he ever hit, but -4 to hit and -3 to defend for being prone is a huge penalty, and standing up wasn't safe for the giant skeleton, and when he tried he missed his DX check, and that was the end of that.  Just hanging back and plinking him with arrows probably would have been the safest strategy, but Bernard's taunts and spear-stabs sped things up.

The fight against the crayfish was interesting because Nemoura could only give two PCs Water Breathing, and only one PC could wear the Ring of Swimming.  So it was essentially a solo fight, with Seépravir providing some buffs.  The GURPS underwater combat rules (from Pyramid 3/26) are just brutal to land creatures: all DX skills capped to Swimming skill, -4 to hit per yard of length for swung weapons, thrust damage -1 per yard of weapon length, swing damage -1 per die per yard, Aquabatics roll needed to retreat.  The ring essentially made Garreth amphibious and got him out of some of those penalties, but he still had -8 to hit and -6 to swing damage with his 2-yard swords.  But he had Great Haste and Blur (at -5), which are pretty nice.  He tried switching to his knife, which had smaller penalties but much less damage.  Climbing up on land was a winning tactic: if the crayfish had been smarter it would have stayed out of reach in the water, but it wasn't that smart, and once it stuck part of its body out of the water, it was in deep deep trouble.

Only two players made the whole session: a couple arrived late and a couple had to leave early.  So things were a bit disjointed, but I think things went okay overall.

DF Whiterock 13: Orcs Can Be Alchemists and Barbarians and Giants

Date:

2018-07-20

Weather:

Warm, partly cloudy

Player Characters:

Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer), Dwarf Cleric, 193 (+10) points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 201 (+10) points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 192 (+6) points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 176 (+10) points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 216 points

Significant NPCs:

Quintus, Alchemist/Wizard in Cillamar

1 Orc Alchemist/Wizard of the White Roc tribe

4 Orc Lab Assistants of the White Roc tribe

1 Unknown Small Green-Skinned Water Creature
2 Orc Barbarians of the White Roc tribe
Drugila, Giant Orc Wizard of the White Roc tribe


Four of the PCs met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar.  Polly was off in the woods somewhere, and nobody was quite sure where Bernard went.  Ibizaber was back, though, presumably from a prolonged bender.

The first order of business was figuring out what that rock-with-spines that attacked them last time was, and whether it was valuable.  Quintus figured out that it was a rasthnum, and that rasthnum spines were useful.  He also mentioned that he'd like more trollhound muscle.

Next, Seépravir went to the Temple of Justicia and brought the prayer book that they had found in the dungeon, in case someone there was interested in cleansing the altar under the castle.  Unfortunately, all of the Holy Warriors were busy smiting other enemies, so nobody was currently free for any dungeon expeditions.

At that point they ran out of things to do in town, so headed to Castle Whiterock.  It was a nice day for a hike, but a bit hot, so they didn't make great time.  Nothing attacked them on the way, so they went back down to the third level of the dungeon, where they'd met some orcs and bugbears last trip.

Seépravir decided to turn invisible and scout the nearby area.  She found that the passage to the south had two doors.  The one to the east had some noisy orcs behind it, with one yelling at someone.  The one to the west was silent.  And then the tunnel continued to the south a bit, before changing from a nice square well-constructed tunnel to a narrow twisty dingy dangerous-looking mine tunnel.  She went back and opened the door with no noise behind it, and found a storeroom, with a bunch of crates, a few picks and shovels, and some dead reptilian humanoid lying on a table, cut open.  She went back to her allies to report.

After some discussion, they decided to ambush the orcs behind the door.  They got in position, then Garreth kicked the door open.  Inside were 5 orcs in scale armor, an alchemy lab, and a big hearth.  Ibizaber snuck up behind one of the orcs and backstabbed, but didn't do enough damage to penetrate armor.  Garreth threw a sai at an orc, missed, and drew his katana.  Seépravir snuck in, still invisible.  And Durkerle started running toward the battle.

The orcs recovered pretty quickly, but didn't accomplish much.  Most of them pulled out flails and proceeded to miss Ibizaber and Garreth with them a lot.  Ibizaber stabbed one of them in the unarmored face and cut off a good chunk of its nose.  Garreth tried stabbling the apparent leader, but he threw his arm in front of the attack and blocked it, taking no damage.  A wizard!  Seépravir found an apparently safe place to stand, near Garreth, and started using her Rapier Wit ability and Stun spell to stun orcs.

One of the orcs actually managed to hurt Garreth, but it wasn't a major wound.  He took a turn to defend and recover, then resumed fighting.  The wizard tried a Command spell to make Garreth fall down, but it failed.  He tried Spasm spell to make Garreth drop his katana, but he did it wrong and Garreth's hand tightened instead of loosening.  Finally, the wizard gave up and pulled out his morningstar.

The PCs kept dodging everything the orcs threw at them.  One of the orcs got frustrated with Ibizaber and decided he was a cheating wizard.  Eventually Garreth started landing cuts, and then Polly came into the room, late as usual, and started shooting orcs with her over-strength bow.  Durkerle had finally reached attack position, but was distracted by Polly's entrance and went to talk to her instead of fighting.  It was over a few seconds later, with the alchemist and his lab assistants all dead.  A toad jumped out of the wizard's clothing, but Garreth killed that too, to Polly's chagrin.  Durkerle cast Major Healing to fix Garreth's flail-wound.

The shelves and tables contained a full alchemy lab, a few books in Orc, plus a bunch of ingredients.  The alchemist had a magical bag, which nobody had time to identify, other than seeing if things placed inside it got lighter.  (They did not.)   There were a books about alchemy, magic, and troglodytes, and a secret compartment with an apparent spellbook inside.  One of the books contained a flier in Gnome, which nobody could read, so they saved it for later.  The invaders grabbed the light and valuable-looking  stuff, and left the heavy and fragile lab equipment for later.

They went back to the room with the dead reptilian.  The crates were full of boring mining equipment.  There was a grappling hook and some rope, which might be useful.  There was also a paper, describing a process for removing scent glands from troglodytes and making stenchpots out of them.  They took the paper.

At that point Ibizaber wanted to scout ahead, so Seépravir cast both Invisibility and Hush on him.  He explored a bunch of dead-end mining tunnels.  One had a word on the floor in Orc, which he didn't read.  He continued until he found a tunnel with a large boulder blocking a hole in the end of it.  It looked deliberately placed.  He tried pushing the boulder out of the way, and was surprised to find that he could.  On the other side was a large cavern, much of it underwater.  Ibizaber saw some kind of small green-skinned green-haired humanoid in the water.  She started singing, and he ran away.

Ibizaber explored some more tunnels, and eventually came to a place where the tunnel led to a white-walled cylindrical tower, with two large orcs with crossbows standing guard outside.  They didn't see or hear him, thanks to the spells, so he snuck up to try to get a better view.  At that point the others were starting to worry about Ibizaber, though, and started trying to follow his tracks through the tunnels.  (Durkerle was left behind to stand guard.)  They came up behind Ibizaber.  Seépravir was invisible, but Garreth and Polly were visible, and the orcs spotted them, and started aiming crossbows and yelling "Drugila!"

Polly ran up and took a shot at an orc.  He dodged, but spoiled his aim.  Garreth ran up and threw a sai, missing.  Ibizaber and Seépravir, both invisible, snuck up.  As Seépravir moved forward, she could see farther into the tower, and saw a giant female orc, picking up boulders.  The orc that had had his aim spoiled aimed again.  The other one fired his (rather large) crossbow at Garreth.  He tried acrobatics to improve his dodge, failed, used his Luck to try again, and made it.  Then he successfully dodged the bolt.

Polly took another shot, but the orc dodged it again, ruining his aim again.  Garreth threw another sai, this one with daylight-bright Continual Light on it.  (It had been observed before that these orcs don't like bright light.)  The sai hit, doing a bit of damage and also spotlighting that orc.  Ibizaber and Seépravir kept creeping up invisibly.

At that point the orc that was trying to shoot Polly got tired of having his aim spoiled and just took a snap shot at her.  Unknown to the orc, Seépravir was in the line of fire.  She tried to dodge, failed, used Luck, and succeeded on the retry.  The bolt kept going and almost hit Polly, but she acrobatically dodged it.  The orc threw his crossbow to the ground in frustration.  (Reloading a crossbow takes a while, so he was about to switch to his flail anyway.)

Not knowing Seépravir was in the line of fire, Polly took another shot at the orc.  Fortunately, she missed Seépravir, hit the orc, and he failed to dodge.  The bodkin arrow went through the orc's mail and did big damage to his vitals.  He failed his knockdown roll for the major wound, and fell down, stunned, dropping his flail.  Meanwhile, back in the tower, Seépravir saw the female giant orc Concentrating on a spell.  She recognized it as one she also knew, Levitation.  Garreth advanced on the other orc that was still standing, and took two rapid swings at him, but he parried one with his flail and the other missed.

Still invisible, Seépravir picked up the stunned orc's dropped flail and threw it back a few yards, making it harder for him to arm himself.  The stunned orc stayed conscious and came out of stun, but was still down and unarmed.  Polly took a shot at the standing orc, but he dodged it.  The giant orc threw a boulder at Polly, but she dodged it.

And we broke there for the night-in mid-battle.  One barbarian orc down and badly hurt and disarmed, but not out.  The other barbarian orc still up and fighting.  And the giant orc (presumed) leader flying around throwing boulders.

GM's Comments:

We lost a player this session.  Durkerle's player wasn't very engaged in the game, and decided to drop out midway through this session.  I will NPC Durkerle until he gets back to town, then retire him.  An important lesson here is that you should pick voice or text before you start the campaign, rather than switching back and forth.  Durkerle's player strongly prefers voice, while most of the others like text, and we keep picking text when we vote every week.  The party is now down a very entertaining character, but also a frequent source of intra-party drama.  We'll invite another player from our waiting list next time the group returns to town.

The orc wizard/alchemist and apprentices weren't much of a match for the party.  Flails are good weapons because they're hard to block or parry, but most of the PCs are pretty good at dodging, and the orcs didn't have very good skill.  The wizard tried several spells, but they kept getting resisted.

Ibizaber probably made a smart tactical decision, running away from the singing water creature rather than staying to deal with her alone.  (He has Curious, and rolled to resist it before running away.)  But that means the mystery of that cave won't be revealed until next time.

The ongoing battle looks like a tough one.  Invisibility is a double-edged sword -- PCs who don't know exactly where their allies are risk shooting them, and Polly's arrows do enough damage to really ruin an ally's day if she hits one of them accidentally.  And all three orcs are either large (SM+1) or gigantic (SM+2).  Do they have the skills to match their obvious size and strength?  We'll find out next time.

We had some Roll20 difficulties, with Ibizaber unable to see anything for a while, despite his token having a light source and me being able to see through his token's eyes.  Eventually I deleted his token and made a new one, which worked.

What Counts as an Attack for Purposes of Wrecking Invisibility in DFRPG?

In traditional D&D, the Invisibility spell went away if you attacked.  So it gave you one sneak attack, but not ongoing sneak attacks.  And there was sometimes also a higher-level version called Greater or Improved Invisibility that stuck around if you attacked.

In GURPS Magic, the Invisibility spell didn't go away if you attacked.  It was quite good, but also quite expensive.

One of the changes for Dungeon Fantasy and later DFRPG was making Invisibility go away if you attacked, but lowering the mana cost a bit to compensate.  The wording in DF1: Adventurers is "To keep Invisibility from completely upstaging thieves, the spell ends instantly if the subject attacks, casts a combat spell, or otherwise does anything more violent than moving around, spying, and stealing. Reduce energy cost from 5/3 to 4/2 to compensate."  This wording is reused almost verbatim in DFRPG: Spells.  So it's clear that violence ends the spell, but not exactly clear what counts as an attack.

A D&D 3.5 SRD goes into a bit more detail.  "For purposes of this spell, an attack includes any spell targeting a foe or whose area or effect includes a foe. (Exactly who is a foe depends on the invisible character’s perceptions.) Actions directed at unattended objects do not break the spell. Causing harm indirectly is not an attack. Thus, an invisible being can open doors, talk, eat, climb stairs, summon monsters and have them attack, cut the ropes holding a rope bridge while enemies are on the bridge, remotely trigger traps, open a portcullis to release attack dogs, and so forth. If the subject attacks directly, however, it immediately becomes visible along with all its gear. Spells such as bless that specifically affect allies but not foes are not attacks for this purpose, even when they include foes in their area."

(Of course D&D rules are not in play in a DFRPG game, but it's an example of someone thinking about the problem and writing more clarifying text.)

In our DFRPG game, I ruled that Rapier Wit counted as an attack.  It's an attempt to directly stun an opponent, and I think that the effect is more important than the mechanism here.  I see Rapier Wit as a whole lot like the Kiai ability that Martial Artists can have (which explicitly says it counts as an attack), or the Stun spell (which is obviously an attack spell since it's targeted on an opponent and nerfs them.)  I think Rapier Wit is an easy call.

The hard calls for me are the cases like pickpocketing an enemy, tying his shoelaces together, or cutting a rope bridge with enemies on it.  The DFRPG spell text explicitly allows stealing, so I decided pickpocketing is okay.  I think tying an enemy's shoelaces together in a combat situation is a grapple attack, so that makes you visible.  The D&D SRD uses the rope bridge as an example that doesn't make you visible, but I think they got that wrong.  It's an attack at a distance, but it's an attack.  Similarly, magically moving a heavy object over someone's head and then letting it fall is an attack, in my mind.

The other interesting case is area spells designed to affect enemies later, rather than now.  I think casting Glue in an enemy's current hex is obviously an attack.  But what about casting Glue in an unoccupied hex that an enemy might or might not step in later?  I think I'll allow that one, though it's a very edgy case.

(Of course these are just local rulings for games where I am the GM; I don't have any authority to tell anyone else how it should work in their games.)

The moral of the story is that RPG rules are never 100% clear, the GM on the spot always has to make a call, and players have to deal with it.  All the GM can promise is to try to be consistent and fair.  There are games that claim to be "100% Rules As Written," but that just promises a lack of deliberate rule changes.  The GM still has to fill in the gaps when the rules aren't perfectly clear, which is often.

DF Whiterock Session 12: Bugbears?

Date:

2018-07-13

Weather:

Warm, clear

Player Characters:

Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer), Dwarf Cleric, 193 (+5) points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 201 (+5) points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 176 (+5) points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 206 (+5) points

Significant NPCs:

3 Bugbear mercenaries

6 Orcs of the White Roc tribe

1 Rock with spines

Play resumed in the same place we stopped last week, right after Garreth's Luck avoided a huge flail trap.  The group continued down that hallway to the west, in a clump, until Polly spotted a bugbear with a spear. lying in wait around a corner.  The bugbears had heard them coming (loud traps will do that) and had achieved surprise.  It threw its spear at Polly without taking more time to aim, and just missed her.

While the PCs were recovering from surprise, the bugbear readied his flail, and two other bugbears with throwing spears (one next to the first, to the south, and another down the hall to the west) started aiming.  Garreth fast-drew his knife, threw it at the bugbear down the hall, and missed.  Durkerle used Awaken on Polly to unstun her.  Polly started shooting at bugbears, but missed.  And Seépravir used Rapier Wit to try to stun a bugbear, which failed and made her Invisibility go away.

The annoyed bugbear swung his flail at the newly visible Seépravir, but Garreth used his sacrificial greatsword parry to stop the attack for her.  Polly shot a bugbear in the heart and knocked it out.  Durkerle kept running at the bugbears, very slowly.  The closer one threw his spear at Durkerle, who blocked it with his shield.  Seépravir cast Stun on that bugbear, successfully.

Polly shot the bugbear to the west twice, once in the vitals and then once in the torso, and killed it.  Garreth hit the closer bugbear with his greatsword, and it fell down trying to dodge, but the blow was surprisingly weak.  Durkerle finally reached melee range and smacked the downed bugbear with his mace, and it tried to surrender.  First it said something in Goblin, which nobody understood.  Then it said something in broken Orc, which enraged Polly, and she shot it through the heart.  It still wasn't quite dead, until Garreth hit it a couple more times while it was down.  Then he wandered over to the knocked-out bugbear and stabbed it in the eye.

The group looted the bugbear's bodies, just finding smelly leather armor and a key.  They then found the room the bugbears had come out of, which contained four (not three!) large beds, a table with some coins and dice on it, and a chest.  The chest had a lock that the bugbear's key opened, and contained a bunch more coins and a paper with writing in a language nobody could read.  It used dwarven runes, so they figured it was Goblin.  At the bottom were what looked like two signatures, one saying "Drugila" in Orc, and the other saying "X" in Illiterate.

After a bit of rest, the group followed the eager Polly down the hallway, then turned southwest at a fork.  A bit further down was a door to the southeast, which Garreth opened.  Inside was a big room containing an altar, three burning magical torches, four archery targets, and a crate.  Everyone checked out the altar, which had what appeared to be the remains of a sacrifice victim.  Further investigation showed that the victim had been human, but that the altar itself looked like something that would be found in a temple of Justicia, not an orcish temple.  At that point Durkerle lost it.  He was no fan of Justicia and decided he wasn't helping to fix her altar.  Polly and Seépravir started cleaning it up themselves, and then Polly decided to search behind it.  She found a secret compartment, which Seépravir figured out how to open.  There was a catch that needed a skinny knife or long lockpick, and she didn't have either, so used Apportation instead.  The compartment opened to reveal a shiny offering plate, a key, a book, and a magical bottle.

The book was entitled "Prayers to Justicia", and Durkerle decided to take it.  He wasn't allowed to, then decided to break the altar with his mace.  Seépravir countered with a Levitation spell on Durkerle, to move him away from the altar.  He failed to resist, and was floated out the door of the room.  Then Garreth held the door closed, and Seépravir read some blessings from the prayer book to attempt to restore the altar.  She then set Durkerle down on the ground, gently.

While fuming outside the door, Durkerle noticed a rock with spines on the ceiling over his head.  He jumped back as it tried to fall on him.  He tried to smack it with his mace, and it dodged.  The rock then started backing away from Durkerle.  The others came out the door, and Garreth ran the retreating rock down.  It tried to hit him, and he parried with his greatsword.  Then Polly took a while running shot at the rock and missed, losing her balance in the process.  The rock finally landed a blow on Garreth, but it didn't penetrate his scale armor.  Seépravir cast a Glue spell on the rock, sticking it securely to the floor, and at that point it was a sitting rock.  Polly shot it with a cutting arrow, and then Garreth chopped it in half, revealing some purple goo inside.

Polly tried to taste the purple filling, which was an impressively poor decision.  She hit the floor, unconscious.  Nobody had any way to cure poison, but Durkerle cast Awaken, and Seépravir tried First Aid to purge some of the poison.  Polly was still paralyzed for a few minutes, but eventually started moving again.  She was lucky that the purple paralysis poison was non-lethal.  The group looked for an empty vial and then gathered as much of the poison as they could.

After some more rest back in the bugbear barracks, they followed Polly down the hallway again, to another door.  This one opened to reveal a barracks with 6 orcs and a lot more than 6 beds.  The orcs were totally unprepared for invasion and were surprised.  Polly shot one, Garreth horribly missed one and dropped his sword, Durkerle ran slowly toward the battle, and Seépravir ran invisibly into the room.

Polly shot another orc, and yelled something about how they killed her sister.  Forgetting he had dropped his sword, Garreth charged into battle.  Fortunately, it was attached by a lanyard, so it followed him.  By the time he had his sword ready, Polly had shot another orc.  Another one was so surprised it turned out it was deeply asleep and would not wake up during this battle.  (Spoiler alert: it would not wake up after the battle either.)

The final two orcs broke out of stun and were brave enough to ready their flails and try to fight.  One yelled something about how Polly was too stupid to tell the White Talon orcs that killed her sister from the White Roc orcs.  (They looked the same: big, strong, milky-white skin, piggy noses.)   One tried to attack Garreth, and missed.  Seépravir used Rapier Wit to stun one, Polly shot one, and Garreth stabbed the other one.  Eventually both passed out.  Garreth then went on a stabbing spree to make sure none of the orcs would ever get up again, while Seépravir looked for loot.  These orcs didn't have much: their weapons, a couple of mail shirts, and a few coins.

At that, the group decided they had enough loot to go back to Cillamar.  They had explored three more rooms and fought bugbears, a rock with poison spines, and a new group of orcs.

GM's Comments:

The bugbears had a nice ambush set up, and achieved surprise, but there were only three of them and they were outclassed by the PCs.  Garreth used his Luck to give himself another chance to recover from mental stun, which turned out to be a good call.  Durkerle used Awaken to unstun Polly, another good call.  And then Polly and Garreth did a lot of damage.  The bugbears had surprisingly good treasure.

The temple was interesting mostly because of intra-party drama.  Seépravir and Polly wanted to un-desecrate the temple of Justicia and Durkerle wasn't having it.  Levitate is a pretty reasonable way to deal with an uncooperative cleric.  And finding a secret compartment in the altar with treasure was a pretty good deal, considering they didn't even have to fight anything for it.

All the yelling and pounding on the door earned a bonus wandering monster roll, which came up rock-with-poison-spines.  (The monster actually has a name, but the players don't know it yet, as none of the PCs recognized it.)  If it had managed to surprise Durkerle and achieve its goal of dropping on his head for impact damage and bonus poison damage, it could have gotten a nice meal.  But it failed to surprise him, and missed, and then it was a fair one-on-one fight on the ground.  And then Durkerle's comrades joined the battle, and four PCs against one rock was not a fair fight.  It was doing a pretty good job of dodging until it got Glued to the floor, and then that was that.  Polly then tried to even the odds by drinking the rock's poison. but fortunately for her it was non-lethal.

The group managed to ambush the group of orcs, and these orcs didn't have great IQ and so didn't recover from Mental Stun very quickly, and being stunned in a room with Polly is a good way to get filled with arrows.  That was a pretty quick and easy fight.

Overall, the group made a bit of progress through the third level of the dungeon, but there was some intra-party drama.