Spirited Away
Mar. 26th, 2003 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight was MY D+D game. Hah.
Well, things didn't go completely smoothly, but it wasn't a disaster either. There were four new people who might have been showing up.
Ed and Luis were also there, of course, so there were enough to play. Barely. After an hour or so where everyone remade their character, we ended up with (1) Aasimar paladin/cleric, (1) half-dragon fighter, and (1) tiefling rogue. They utterly annihilated the opponents put up against them.
I have a battlemat, but only a couple minis, so I had them select little plastic digimon to represent their characters. The enemies were little plastic pokemon. It worked pretty well.
A group of low-level adventurers was sent to investigate the mysterious disappearances of various buildings and small villages over a wide area. They spend the night in an inn. It disappears. This was the premise -- because originally part of the party was going to be from the underdark, the game started with them being transported instead of going through the aboveground portion of the adventure.
So, awoken in the middle of the night by a loud rumbling earthquakey noise, the heroes look out the window to see no moon, no stars, no trees, nothing. Since they all have darkvision, they do see the rocky ground where before was a grassy field... Abbey (the tiefling) tries to sneak into another guestroom to look out a different window, and succeeds in waking a very loud, stupid, obstinate man.
Screams from below are cut off suddenly as the man begins shouting, and soon a quartet of drow come into view. Abbey darts out the window and onto the roof, while Mr. Fighter (he has no name yet) engages the drow and quickly dispatches two of them. Mr. Cleric (he also has no name yet) does nothing useful. The remaining drow cast a darkness spell, call for reinforcements, and flee the premises.
The party carefully follows the drow outside, where three wait with crossbows armed. The doorframe is well poisoned. As the party rushes to attack, a fourth drow, a cleric, attempts to cast hold person -- but the party has no 'persons', and it fails. Then she's killed in one hit by Mr. half dragon Fighter's greatsword -- he does that a lot.
More drow are killed, but a couple get away under cover of Darkness. A drow prisoner is rescued and questioned -- he's arrogant, sneering at the party and confident in his safety because they're softhearted surface dwellers and won't attack him without a reason. Since there's a paladin in the party, this turns out to be an accurate assessment. He agrees to guide the party to some deep gnomes who might be friendly, although not to him, in return for their promise to speak with the gnomes on his behalf.
There are also four surviving civilians, who are conscripted as pack mules. The inn is burned as a pyre for the dead, and to deny any further use of it to the drow.
The only known exit from the cavern is guarded by a drow sentinal sphere, which attacks after Mr. Fighter bounces an arrow off it. Mr. Cleric makes Mr. Fighter's sword magical for a minute or two, and Mr. Fighter proceeds to smash the sphere to dust before it can roll well enough to do more than fatigue everyone, and do 4 sonic damage. Abbey's rapier proves utterly ineffective -- obviously, the Magic Weapon spell was needed.
The party is exhausted (although the pack mules and drow guide aren't -- they fled the sphere before it got to use its chaos burst) but presses on for about an hour, until they're ambushed by grimlocks that lead off with a darkness spell on the entire party... except for the rogue scout Abbey whom they didn't see (and who didn't see them). Abbey tells everyone to fall back, leaving her all by herself and exposed. Hiding doesn't really help against blindsight (although move silently does).
The half fiend barbarian grimlock mortally wounds one of the civilians, leading the paladin Mr. Cleric to attempt to fight the grimlocks inside the darkness spell for a round, before realizing that this is pointless, at which point he grabs her and drags her out. Through all this he takes no damage as his armor is far too effective for any of the grimlocks to hit other than the leader (who rolls poorly).
Out of the darkness, Mr. Cleric and Mr. Fighter start chewing through the grunts. Abbey, far away and on the other side of the darkness (since she bizarrely sent the party fleeing *away* from her) takes out the grimlock that was tracking her scent, then gets attacked by Mr. Big Evil Half Fiend, and flees into the darkness, where she gets taken down. Mr. Big Evil Half Fiend then makes the stupid mistake of coming out where Mr. Fighter can see him, and is quickly killed.
Mr. Cleric then rescues Abbey and the fallen civilian, but both remain unconscious and have to be carried on some bedsheets Abbey wisely took from the inn before burning it. The drow guide finds a safish place for them to hide for a bit to rest and regain spells -- a small cul-de-sac with nothing worthwhile in it that leads nowhere.
next week
I think I need tougher monsters -- the average party level was 4, and the party was understrength with only 3 members, but the EL 6 encounters were not any sort of challenge for them. Probably because I sprinkled in a bunch of smaller monsters that accomplished exactly nothing since they couldn't hit the party's insanely high AC -- while raging and charging, the half dragon still had AC 18. His was the lowest.
Well, things didn't go completely smoothly, but it wasn't a disaster either. There were four new people who might have been showing up.
- Person 1 called ahead of time to say he wouldn't be there this week. He's friends with person 4, and expected to show up eventualy.
- Person 2 called to verify the time and place, 15 minutes before the event. He didn't show. Attempts to track him down ran into the brick wall of his personal information being scrambled and useless.
- Person 3 was not expected to show, as he wanted to play an evil character (although he danced around the issue) and I wasn't allowing evil characters by popular request (although I danced around the issue). He didn't show.
- Person 4 showed up! Yay!
Ed and Luis were also there, of course, so there were enough to play. Barely. After an hour or so where everyone remade their character, we ended up with (1) Aasimar paladin/cleric, (1) half-dragon fighter, and (1) tiefling rogue. They utterly annihilated the opponents put up against them.
I have a battlemat, but only a couple minis, so I had them select little plastic digimon to represent their characters. The enemies were little plastic pokemon. It worked pretty well.
A group of low-level adventurers was sent to investigate the mysterious disappearances of various buildings and small villages over a wide area. They spend the night in an inn. It disappears. This was the premise -- because originally part of the party was going to be from the underdark, the game started with them being transported instead of going through the aboveground portion of the adventure.
So, awoken in the middle of the night by a loud rumbling earthquakey noise, the heroes look out the window to see no moon, no stars, no trees, nothing. Since they all have darkvision, they do see the rocky ground where before was a grassy field... Abbey (the tiefling) tries to sneak into another guestroom to look out a different window, and succeeds in waking a very loud, stupid, obstinate man.
Screams from below are cut off suddenly as the man begins shouting, and soon a quartet of drow come into view. Abbey darts out the window and onto the roof, while Mr. Fighter (he has no name yet) engages the drow and quickly dispatches two of them. Mr. Cleric (he also has no name yet) does nothing useful. The remaining drow cast a darkness spell, call for reinforcements, and flee the premises.
The party carefully follows the drow outside, where three wait with crossbows armed. The doorframe is well poisoned. As the party rushes to attack, a fourth drow, a cleric, attempts to cast hold person -- but the party has no 'persons', and it fails. Then she's killed in one hit by Mr. half dragon Fighter's greatsword -- he does that a lot.
More drow are killed, but a couple get away under cover of Darkness. A drow prisoner is rescued and questioned -- he's arrogant, sneering at the party and confident in his safety because they're softhearted surface dwellers and won't attack him without a reason. Since there's a paladin in the party, this turns out to be an accurate assessment. He agrees to guide the party to some deep gnomes who might be friendly, although not to him, in return for their promise to speak with the gnomes on his behalf.
There are also four surviving civilians, who are conscripted as pack mules. The inn is burned as a pyre for the dead, and to deny any further use of it to the drow.
The only known exit from the cavern is guarded by a drow sentinal sphere, which attacks after Mr. Fighter bounces an arrow off it. Mr. Cleric makes Mr. Fighter's sword magical for a minute or two, and Mr. Fighter proceeds to smash the sphere to dust before it can roll well enough to do more than fatigue everyone, and do 4 sonic damage. Abbey's rapier proves utterly ineffective -- obviously, the Magic Weapon spell was needed.
The party is exhausted (although the pack mules and drow guide aren't -- they fled the sphere before it got to use its chaos burst) but presses on for about an hour, until they're ambushed by grimlocks that lead off with a darkness spell on the entire party... except for the rogue scout Abbey whom they didn't see (and who didn't see them). Abbey tells everyone to fall back, leaving her all by herself and exposed. Hiding doesn't really help against blindsight (although move silently does).
The half fiend barbarian grimlock mortally wounds one of the civilians, leading the paladin Mr. Cleric to attempt to fight the grimlocks inside the darkness spell for a round, before realizing that this is pointless, at which point he grabs her and drags her out. Through all this he takes no damage as his armor is far too effective for any of the grimlocks to hit other than the leader (who rolls poorly).
Out of the darkness, Mr. Cleric and Mr. Fighter start chewing through the grunts. Abbey, far away and on the other side of the darkness (since she bizarrely sent the party fleeing *away* from her) takes out the grimlock that was tracking her scent, then gets attacked by Mr. Big Evil Half Fiend, and flees into the darkness, where she gets taken down. Mr. Big Evil Half Fiend then makes the stupid mistake of coming out where Mr. Fighter can see him, and is quickly killed.
Mr. Cleric then rescues Abbey and the fallen civilian, but both remain unconscious and have to be carried on some bedsheets Abbey wisely took from the inn before burning it. The drow guide finds a safish place for them to hide for a bit to rest and regain spells -- a small cul-de-sac with nothing worthwhile in it that leads nowhere.
next week
I think I need tougher monsters -- the average party level was 4, and the party was understrength with only 3 members, but the EL 6 encounters were not any sort of challenge for them. Probably because I sprinkled in a bunch of smaller monsters that accomplished exactly nothing since they couldn't hit the party's insanely high AC -- while raging and charging, the half dragon still had AC 18. His was the lowest.
