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terryclothTonight was another episode of Underground Martian Robot Battles, the Series. I tried to encourage the party to go rescue their friend, but screwed it up and ended up just prolonging the fighting until he was captured. But at least we got out of combat by the end of the session.
Hesperius, Jackie, and Adam saw a tripod attacking Shadarack's cube, and tried to work their way closer, figuring something was up. As they passed directly by the robot factory, though, the doors opened and an entire army of robots started piling out! So of course they stood to fight.
In the beginning, things weren't going so well (although they all had PPFs to protect them), and they retreated into the next building over, which was full of purple pyramids -- but then Hesperius broke out the single-use sulfur-ring missile-launchers, and they started kicking spider and fly-eye butt.
But oh no! One of the tripods was acting remarkably perceptive, and headed right for them. Of course, they were inside a building, which made it hard for it to fire on them, but it started doing the splits to bring itself down within range... and a pair of missile launchers aimed at the spiders clustered around its feet took down its shield, at which point Hesperius' horde of elementals rushed out to attack it. It fought back, and killed a couple of the elementals, but was eventually shot to pieces by the swarm... and its wrecked body fell to the ground, glowing brighter and brighter...
So, yes, they fled from the building explosion, deeper into the room full of purple crystals. They were shielded from the direct explosion, but the purple crystals started going off in a chain reaction of secondary explosions. Hesperius and Adam fled to different doors, while Jackie ran upstairs.
Upstairs was not safe from the explosions -- a field of purple and invisible laser beams seemed to waver as the explosions passed across the building, and Jackie was hit as he dove through the field... and became tangible again,finally, although being in an exploding building was perhaps not the best place for it. He was able to climb down around the steadily brightening shaft of purple light filling the stairwell (of sorts) that he'd come up, and run outside, where he met up with Hesperius and Adam, who were fleeing from a giant black spider that had popped up in the central building.
They fled all the way out of the city, then circled down around under the city, went back up the drainpipe into the inactive pyramid, and plotted how to actually escape without being seen running away -- they wanted the robots and such to still be hunting them in the city.
So Hesperius sent a few of his elementals to attack as a diversion, while he got rid of the sulfur scale and cast an invisibility that didn't trail obvious yellow smoke. As he let go of the scale, which he'd been using to cast many spells all day long, he felt a little queasy, but shook it off.
The diversion and escape didn't work as well as they'd hoped, however -- the diversion wasn't able to actually hurt the spider, and so only distracted it a little, and it saw through the illusion on one of the party, and started chasing them. They were able to outdistance it, but anyone controlling it would know that they'd left.
Then they had to run the gauntlet of trilobytes. Hundreds of trilobytes were lining the ceiling, floor, and walls of the narrow tunnel that led to the way out, and a few of them spotted one or more of the party. PPFs took a few more hits, but nothing serious. Once they were past the swarm, and had a little distance on them, Hesperius turned around and fired his remaining sulfur-ring missiles into the mass, blowing up about 60 of the little critters. Then they turned to leave.
But as they got to the room where Jackie's fire elemental had been killed by a hail of gunfire before, they were met by a hail of gunfire as six turrets popped up from the piles of junk and started firing. They mainly tried to just flee, but a force field delayed them long enough for all of Hesperius' elementals to be taken down, and for the party's PPFs to be further compromised, but Jackie took down the force field and they escaped to the upper levels.
Since Hesperius was out of magic, and Jackie's alchemy lab was still sitting in a pyramid back in the martian city waiting for him, they decided to go back to town to rest up and prepare, before coming back to rescue Shadarack.
Because Shadarack had been captured.
While those three were fighting the army of robots, Shadarack was locked in a one-on-one duel with a drakivolki wizard inside the pyramid he'd ducked into to avoid the tripod that was disintegrating his cube. He fired his gun at the mage, but the mage was carrying a glowing blue scale, that looked much like the sulfur-tainted red scale Hesperius had been using to enhance his illusions and creations, and easily cast a magical barrier that stopped the attacks cold. "Surrender, and we won't kill you," the Drakivolki offered, but Shadarack would have none of that.
The wizard paralyzed Shadarack's legs with a spell. Shadarack used his gauntlet to dump him into a pit, which tried to close around him, but was prevented by his magical barrier. The wizard dumped Shadarack into a deeper pit, while simultaneously freeing himself. Shadarack started programming his gauntlet to drop a big chunk of rock on the wizard. The wizard filled the pit Shadarack was in with quick-hardening glue. Shadarack tried to open a pit to drain the glue away, but it was too late -- it had formed a crust and wouldn't drain. The mage paralyzed Shadarack's arms. Shadarack cursed.
At that point, while Shadarack struggled in vain to will his arms to move, the mage made himself partly ghosty and hovered in to strip Shadarack of his easily removable possessions, then dragged him back to the central pyramid, where he was thrown into a cell, stripped of all his equipment.
After a few boring hours of waiting, the Drakivolki came back, flanked by a pair of gun-wielding Hannah, to ask Shadarack who he was and demand an explanation for why he was tresspassing on their archeological site. Shadarack claimed to be the spearhead of a massive expedition, who'd be there to rescue him soon, but the drakivolki wasn't fazed.
Eventually, he got around to asking Shadarack, who'd claimed to be an archaeologist, if he'd discovered anything useful while exploring the city, before he was spotted and attacked. "If you answer, we'll at least give you food and water. If your answers are interesting enough, you can join our team studying the city, which would be much more comfortable than being our prisoner... we can't let you leave, of course, since the grave robbers would be on us like a plague of locusts within the day if anyone found out about this place. So... did you find anything out?"
Shadarack told him that he needed some time to think over what he'd seen and come up with an answer to that, so the drakivolki left him alone in the room to think.
last session next session
After the game, Shadarack complained that his character was underpowered compared to everyone else. I basically told him that yes, there was some truth to that, since he'd taken a lot of skill points in passive skills like 'spot' and 'find and disable traps' and 'treasure hunter lore', which were also kind of redundant in some ways. But I also reminded him that he had a potentially powerful ability to focus his luck that he hadn't been using much... it's basically his magical style. It's useless in combat, but he's not always in combat (the last two sessions notwithstanding). In particular, there was probably something it could do for him to get him out of the mess he's in now.
The problem (which is probably why he hasn't been using it) is that it doesn't always work. In fact, it only has something like a 12% chance of working (raised to 31% just now) on each try. He can try for the same thing more than once, though, so he should eventually be able to get luck back on his side.
When I got home, I found that a little more work had been done in my bathroom, but it still isn't finished. They promise to take care of it Monday. We'll see.
Hesperius, Jackie, and Adam saw a tripod attacking Shadarack's cube, and tried to work their way closer, figuring something was up. As they passed directly by the robot factory, though, the doors opened and an entire army of robots started piling out! So of course they stood to fight.
In the beginning, things weren't going so well (although they all had PPFs to protect them), and they retreated into the next building over, which was full of purple pyramids -- but then Hesperius broke out the single-use sulfur-ring missile-launchers, and they started kicking spider and fly-eye butt.
But oh no! One of the tripods was acting remarkably perceptive, and headed right for them. Of course, they were inside a building, which made it hard for it to fire on them, but it started doing the splits to bring itself down within range... and a pair of missile launchers aimed at the spiders clustered around its feet took down its shield, at which point Hesperius' horde of elementals rushed out to attack it. It fought back, and killed a couple of the elementals, but was eventually shot to pieces by the swarm... and its wrecked body fell to the ground, glowing brighter and brighter...
So, yes, they fled from the building explosion, deeper into the room full of purple crystals. They were shielded from the direct explosion, but the purple crystals started going off in a chain reaction of secondary explosions. Hesperius and Adam fled to different doors, while Jackie ran upstairs.
Upstairs was not safe from the explosions -- a field of purple and invisible laser beams seemed to waver as the explosions passed across the building, and Jackie was hit as he dove through the field... and became tangible again,finally, although being in an exploding building was perhaps not the best place for it. He was able to climb down around the steadily brightening shaft of purple light filling the stairwell (of sorts) that he'd come up, and run outside, where he met up with Hesperius and Adam, who were fleeing from a giant black spider that had popped up in the central building.
They fled all the way out of the city, then circled down around under the city, went back up the drainpipe into the inactive pyramid, and plotted how to actually escape without being seen running away -- they wanted the robots and such to still be hunting them in the city.
So Hesperius sent a few of his elementals to attack as a diversion, while he got rid of the sulfur scale and cast an invisibility that didn't trail obvious yellow smoke. As he let go of the scale, which he'd been using to cast many spells all day long, he felt a little queasy, but shook it off.
The diversion and escape didn't work as well as they'd hoped, however -- the diversion wasn't able to actually hurt the spider, and so only distracted it a little, and it saw through the illusion on one of the party, and started chasing them. They were able to outdistance it, but anyone controlling it would know that they'd left.
Then they had to run the gauntlet of trilobytes. Hundreds of trilobytes were lining the ceiling, floor, and walls of the narrow tunnel that led to the way out, and a few of them spotted one or more of the party. PPFs took a few more hits, but nothing serious. Once they were past the swarm, and had a little distance on them, Hesperius turned around and fired his remaining sulfur-ring missiles into the mass, blowing up about 60 of the little critters. Then they turned to leave.
But as they got to the room where Jackie's fire elemental had been killed by a hail of gunfire before, they were met by a hail of gunfire as six turrets popped up from the piles of junk and started firing. They mainly tried to just flee, but a force field delayed them long enough for all of Hesperius' elementals to be taken down, and for the party's PPFs to be further compromised, but Jackie took down the force field and they escaped to the upper levels.
Since Hesperius was out of magic, and Jackie's alchemy lab was still sitting in a pyramid back in the martian city waiting for him, they decided to go back to town to rest up and prepare, before coming back to rescue Shadarack.
Because Shadarack had been captured.
While those three were fighting the army of robots, Shadarack was locked in a one-on-one duel with a drakivolki wizard inside the pyramid he'd ducked into to avoid the tripod that was disintegrating his cube. He fired his gun at the mage, but the mage was carrying a glowing blue scale, that looked much like the sulfur-tainted red scale Hesperius had been using to enhance his illusions and creations, and easily cast a magical barrier that stopped the attacks cold. "Surrender, and we won't kill you," the Drakivolki offered, but Shadarack would have none of that.
The wizard paralyzed Shadarack's legs with a spell. Shadarack used his gauntlet to dump him into a pit, which tried to close around him, but was prevented by his magical barrier. The wizard dumped Shadarack into a deeper pit, while simultaneously freeing himself. Shadarack started programming his gauntlet to drop a big chunk of rock on the wizard. The wizard filled the pit Shadarack was in with quick-hardening glue. Shadarack tried to open a pit to drain the glue away, but it was too late -- it had formed a crust and wouldn't drain. The mage paralyzed Shadarack's arms. Shadarack cursed.
At that point, while Shadarack struggled in vain to will his arms to move, the mage made himself partly ghosty and hovered in to strip Shadarack of his easily removable possessions, then dragged him back to the central pyramid, where he was thrown into a cell, stripped of all his equipment.
After a few boring hours of waiting, the Drakivolki came back, flanked by a pair of gun-wielding Hannah, to ask Shadarack who he was and demand an explanation for why he was tresspassing on their archeological site. Shadarack claimed to be the spearhead of a massive expedition, who'd be there to rescue him soon, but the drakivolki wasn't fazed.
Eventually, he got around to asking Shadarack, who'd claimed to be an archaeologist, if he'd discovered anything useful while exploring the city, before he was spotted and attacked. "If you answer, we'll at least give you food and water. If your answers are interesting enough, you can join our team studying the city, which would be much more comfortable than being our prisoner... we can't let you leave, of course, since the grave robbers would be on us like a plague of locusts within the day if anyone found out about this place. So... did you find anything out?"
Shadarack told him that he needed some time to think over what he'd seen and come up with an answer to that, so the drakivolki left him alone in the room to think.
last session next session
After the game, Shadarack complained that his character was underpowered compared to everyone else. I basically told him that yes, there was some truth to that, since he'd taken a lot of skill points in passive skills like 'spot' and 'find and disable traps' and 'treasure hunter lore', which were also kind of redundant in some ways. But I also reminded him that he had a potentially powerful ability to focus his luck that he hadn't been using much... it's basically his magical style. It's useless in combat, but he's not always in combat (the last two sessions notwithstanding). In particular, there was probably something it could do for him to get him out of the mess he's in now.
The problem (which is probably why he hasn't been using it) is that it doesn't always work. In fact, it only has something like a 12% chance of working (raised to 31% just now) on each try. He can try for the same thing more than once, though, so he should eventually be able to get luck back on his side.
When I got home, I found that a little more work had been done in my bathroom, but it still isn't finished. They promise to take care of it Monday. We'll see.
