Hack and Slash
May. 26th, 2007 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSo, since Snowwy was busy at a film festival this week (and will be for the next couple weeks), we played D+D on Friday night, with Keith running a 'hack and slash dungeon crawl'.
We were using weird anime-style races Keith made up using rules from the BESM D20 game, and a few anime modifiers to the game rules as well, mostly to encourage criticals and add critical fumbles. But also 'reflex save to avoid being crushed by dying ogre' and stuff like that, ad hoc.
Lazar wanted to play a wild mage from 2e, but there isn't a good version of that in the current version, so he played a specialist evoker wizard instead, from a race of flying hawk-people. Murdock played a Canid (dog-person) soulknife, because apparently he wanted to try the weird psionic class. A canid soulknife with a *24 strength*. I decided to play a high elf druid, since elves had no level adjustment and a lot of wisdom.
Somehow, between the even more massive dex bonuses Keith's elves get and the general awesomeness of produce flame, this turned into 'pyromaniac druid'.
Me: "Okay, I've got my spells memorized. Faerie fire, four copies of produce flame, 2 barkskins, flame blade, greater magic fang, empowered produce flame."
Lazar: "Um... you do know you're our only *healer*, right?"
Me: "*sigh* FINE. I'll swap some of the produce flames out for some cure lights. Oh, and I'd better memorize reduce animal, I totally forgot."
So the party was travelling to the city of somethingorother through the foothills of whatchamacallit for some reason or other, with an NPC amnesiac accompanying them because, well, they were kind of curious what she was, and she didn't need to eat or get a share of the treasure or anything. They found a destroyed caravan, and immediately the wizard and his familiar approached to scout for danger... but the bandits were long gone, so the party moved in to see if any of the travellers could be saved. One was still alive, so the druid cast a cure light wounds on him to bring him conscious. "Ah, I'm glad you're awake. You owe me 50 gold. You don't have to pay right now, I'll just charge you the standard interest rates."
The man was in no shape to protest being billed for saving his life, instead he told a sob story about how bugbears had attacked the caravan, carrying off all its trade goods, and in addition his daughter, who they were going to ransom back to the town for 1000 gold.
"So you'll pay us 1000 gold if we rescue her?" the wizard asked.
"No, I have nothing, I'm ruined! But... I think there's a reward for the head of the bandit leader."
"What does this leader look like?"
"No one knows..."
"Then we can just take any random head..."
"Clerics have ways of making heads talk," the druid pointed out, derailing the wizard's schemes, "Besides, we'll be able to loot... I mean, to salvage the trade goods from the caravan and others the bandits have robbed, to make up our expenses. That is our usual business model."
"...we have a business model?"
So, none of them knew how to track, but the bugbear's trail was plain to see (DC 10), so they followed it to a cave that had apparently once been used for some sort of temple, but was now bugbear central. The doors were closed and locked, and beyond a 10-foot spiked pit, and they didn't have a rogue to climb walls or pick it. They airlifted the Canid over on the druid's bat, though, and he was completely unable to open the doors. Luckily, the bugbears had heard them complaining, and opened the doors to attack... and were completely unprepared to have the party's fighter RIGHT THERE -- they'd been counting on the pit to be a barrier.
So they didn't last long.
There were several options of ways to go through the dungeon, so the druid picked at random.
"Are you using a right hand rule or a left hand rule?"
"Actually, I'm alternating."
This took them directly to the barracks where the entire bandit company (minus the three killed at the entrance) was waiting for them, in formation. The bandit's leader was obvious -- a giant ogre with a magic club.
The druid had his bat form a protective wall for him to hide behind while he started summoning, while the soulknife engaged the enemies that ran up to melee, the wizard cast a shield, and the ogre... teleported behind the party. Oops. The wizard prompty flew over the heads of the front lines and went to town on the archers with area effect spells, while the bat and soulknife held off the melee bugbears and the druid took on the ogre with the help of his summoned dire wolf and the NPC, who started to fight back with a katana after the ogre hit her with his club. Somehow, she survived two hits from it... this probably saved the druid's life, since he waded into melee with a flame blade to flank with his wolf, and the ogre didn't go down *nearly* as fast as he expected.
GM: "It's a 7th level fighter ogre, didn't you know?"
Druid: "Oh... crap."
The ogre *did* go down before the rest of the party finished off the bugbears, though, and the dire wolf (which did most of the damage to the ogre, although the wizard tossed a scorching ray that critted) even got a round of attacks against one of the wounded ones. And the druid even dodged the falling ogre corpse! How convenient!
So, the bandits were all dead. They cut off the ogre's head, gathered up all the loot, and explored the rest of the dungeon. After the druid insisted that someone else search the pile of offal for any loot, the soulknife remarked on his greediness.
"Aren't druids supposed to be nature-loving hippies?"
"I'm not that kind of druid. My specialty is the dungeon/adventurer ecosystem -- it's important that we use every part of the dungeon we've killed, out of respect."
Eventually, they found the peasant's daughter and freed her. "I don't know how your father is going to afford the ransom for you... just kidding, kidnapping is way too much trouble." What they didn't find was any sign of the caravan's 'trade goods'... so they searched for secret doors, and found a rather badly-concealed one in the back of the girl's cell, which opened into... an untouched area of the temple, that had obviously never seen a bugbear.
Still worth exploring. "Watch out for ghosts. Temples always have undead."
"Is this really a temple? All the statues are of that guy with the sword, it might just be a tomb."
"Well, tombs are *always* full of undead."
No undead, though. Just some tapestries... that looked like they'd be worth a couple hundred gold if they were torn off the walls and pawned, although the wizard wanted to leave them intact since the whole site might be more valuable as an ancient temple. The trap that summoned a chimera to attack them had different ideas, though, and the beast tore through the tapestry!
The wizard threw a tanglefoot bag at it, the druid's bat made itself a wall of bat to keep it from leaving the alcove, and then they all pelted it to death with ranged attacks. This didn't work quite as well as they'd hoped, since it had a breath weapon it got to use once, but no one was that badly hurt before it went down.
GM: "Okay, you know how I said in anime you didn't have to worry about the enemies killing your horses? If you're not riding your bat and keep sending it into melee to be a shield against the enemies, I'm not going to go easy on it."
Me: "Hey, I picked 'giant bat' 'cause they have massive AC. Well, that and I can ride it and it flies."
The tapestries implied that the fountain at the end of the chamber was magical, so the wizard spent some time dipping all 137 crossbow bolts he'd recovered from the bugbears into it. Neither the druid nor the soulknife had anything really worth dipping, even if it was magic.
last session, different campaign | next session
Then Sandy came out and drove us away.
We were using weird anime-style races Keith made up using rules from the BESM D20 game, and a few anime modifiers to the game rules as well, mostly to encourage criticals and add critical fumbles. But also 'reflex save to avoid being crushed by dying ogre' and stuff like that, ad hoc.
Lazar wanted to play a wild mage from 2e, but there isn't a good version of that in the current version, so he played a specialist evoker wizard instead, from a race of flying hawk-people. Murdock played a Canid (dog-person) soulknife, because apparently he wanted to try the weird psionic class. A canid soulknife with a *24 strength*. I decided to play a high elf druid, since elves had no level adjustment and a lot of wisdom.
Somehow, between the even more massive dex bonuses Keith's elves get and the general awesomeness of produce flame, this turned into 'pyromaniac druid'.
Me: "Okay, I've got my spells memorized. Faerie fire, four copies of produce flame, 2 barkskins, flame blade, greater magic fang, empowered produce flame."
Lazar: "Um... you do know you're our only *healer*, right?"
Me: "*sigh* FINE. I'll swap some of the produce flames out for some cure lights. Oh, and I'd better memorize reduce animal, I totally forgot."
So the party was travelling to the city of somethingorother through the foothills of whatchamacallit for some reason or other, with an NPC amnesiac accompanying them because, well, they were kind of curious what she was, and she didn't need to eat or get a share of the treasure or anything. They found a destroyed caravan, and immediately the wizard and his familiar approached to scout for danger... but the bandits were long gone, so the party moved in to see if any of the travellers could be saved. One was still alive, so the druid cast a cure light wounds on him to bring him conscious. "Ah, I'm glad you're awake. You owe me 50 gold. You don't have to pay right now, I'll just charge you the standard interest rates."
The man was in no shape to protest being billed for saving his life, instead he told a sob story about how bugbears had attacked the caravan, carrying off all its trade goods, and in addition his daughter, who they were going to ransom back to the town for 1000 gold.
"So you'll pay us 1000 gold if we rescue her?" the wizard asked.
"No, I have nothing, I'm ruined! But... I think there's a reward for the head of the bandit leader."
"What does this leader look like?"
"No one knows..."
"Then we can just take any random head..."
"Clerics have ways of making heads talk," the druid pointed out, derailing the wizard's schemes, "Besides, we'll be able to loot... I mean, to salvage the trade goods from the caravan and others the bandits have robbed, to make up our expenses. That is our usual business model."
"...we have a business model?"
So, none of them knew how to track, but the bugbear's trail was plain to see (DC 10), so they followed it to a cave that had apparently once been used for some sort of temple, but was now bugbear central. The doors were closed and locked, and beyond a 10-foot spiked pit, and they didn't have a rogue to climb walls or pick it. They airlifted the Canid over on the druid's bat, though, and he was completely unable to open the doors. Luckily, the bugbears had heard them complaining, and opened the doors to attack... and were completely unprepared to have the party's fighter RIGHT THERE -- they'd been counting on the pit to be a barrier.
So they didn't last long.
There were several options of ways to go through the dungeon, so the druid picked at random.
"Are you using a right hand rule or a left hand rule?"
"Actually, I'm alternating."
This took them directly to the barracks where the entire bandit company (minus the three killed at the entrance) was waiting for them, in formation. The bandit's leader was obvious -- a giant ogre with a magic club.
The druid had his bat form a protective wall for him to hide behind while he started summoning, while the soulknife engaged the enemies that ran up to melee, the wizard cast a shield, and the ogre... teleported behind the party. Oops. The wizard prompty flew over the heads of the front lines and went to town on the archers with area effect spells, while the bat and soulknife held off the melee bugbears and the druid took on the ogre with the help of his summoned dire wolf and the NPC, who started to fight back with a katana after the ogre hit her with his club. Somehow, she survived two hits from it... this probably saved the druid's life, since he waded into melee with a flame blade to flank with his wolf, and the ogre didn't go down *nearly* as fast as he expected.
GM: "It's a 7th level fighter ogre, didn't you know?"
Druid: "Oh... crap."
The ogre *did* go down before the rest of the party finished off the bugbears, though, and the dire wolf (which did most of the damage to the ogre, although the wizard tossed a scorching ray that critted) even got a round of attacks against one of the wounded ones. And the druid even dodged the falling ogre corpse! How convenient!
So, the bandits were all dead. They cut off the ogre's head, gathered up all the loot, and explored the rest of the dungeon. After the druid insisted that someone else search the pile of offal for any loot, the soulknife remarked on his greediness.
"Aren't druids supposed to be nature-loving hippies?"
"I'm not that kind of druid. My specialty is the dungeon/adventurer ecosystem -- it's important that we use every part of the dungeon we've killed, out of respect."
Eventually, they found the peasant's daughter and freed her. "I don't know how your father is going to afford the ransom for you... just kidding, kidnapping is way too much trouble." What they didn't find was any sign of the caravan's 'trade goods'... so they searched for secret doors, and found a rather badly-concealed one in the back of the girl's cell, which opened into... an untouched area of the temple, that had obviously never seen a bugbear.
Still worth exploring. "Watch out for ghosts. Temples always have undead."
"Is this really a temple? All the statues are of that guy with the sword, it might just be a tomb."
"Well, tombs are *always* full of undead."
No undead, though. Just some tapestries... that looked like they'd be worth a couple hundred gold if they were torn off the walls and pawned, although the wizard wanted to leave them intact since the whole site might be more valuable as an ancient temple. The trap that summoned a chimera to attack them had different ideas, though, and the beast tore through the tapestry!
The wizard threw a tanglefoot bag at it, the druid's bat made itself a wall of bat to keep it from leaving the alcove, and then they all pelted it to death with ranged attacks. This didn't work quite as well as they'd hoped, since it had a breath weapon it got to use once, but no one was that badly hurt before it went down.
GM: "Okay, you know how I said in anime you didn't have to worry about the enemies killing your horses? If you're not riding your bat and keep sending it into melee to be a shield against the enemies, I'm not going to go easy on it."
Me: "Hey, I picked 'giant bat' 'cause they have massive AC. Well, that and I can ride it and it flies."
The tapestries implied that the fountain at the end of the chamber was magical, so the wizard spent some time dipping all 137 crossbow bolts he'd recovered from the bugbears into it. Neither the druid nor the soulknife had anything really worth dipping, even if it was magic.
last session, different campaign | next session
Then Sandy came out and drove us away.
