What will people learn from the GFS II fighting?

This post is a connected followup to Boss/Worthy/Fodder ranking the GFS II guys.
Meta-gamey concerns I have as a GM

The Master/Gith almost solo'd the whole group, even with them using potions and Great Haste. This was for a few reasons.

One, he was using buffs, too. Missile Shield for one, some spellstones and potions graciously donated by previous delvers for another.

Second, the players didn't have their cleric with them, which meant the Master/Gith wasn't trying to undo Curse over and over, and the PCs - used to constant and immediate healing - had the same problem the Master/Gith did, which was, no one to heal injuries.

Third, he was legitimately boss-level - some very potent advantages, some magical gear, excellent armor, and spells. His skills were also high - experienced PC level skills.

He lost anyway, for a few reasons.

His disadvantages dictated a way to fight and a way to handle the threats of the PC. He couldn't just do the most efficient thing in the moment, although he generally had a lot of good options.

The PCs outnumbered him in the end, and it didn't all that much to take out what forces he could muster to help him. With no one to watch his back, the PCs kept after him tightly, forcing him to hit and move and hit and move until he made a mistake (disads are disadvantageous, it happens) and was taken down.
But still, he managed to kill one PC, and knock out two others, before going down.

My game concern is that the players will react by thinking, well, if DX 25 (!) and Skill 25-28 wasn't enough to overwhelm this guy without taking losses, we need to be at least skill 25-28 before DX potions. Slams didn't work well on this guy because he was very strong for his slight build, so people might start thinking, we also need more strength on everyone. You know, what if - just what if - everyone else got killed and one of the PCs had to solo one of these guys. Better for all concerned that the PC has more skill, more ST, and more DX than this guy, right?

That will work.

But then it means instead of a foe like this being interesting, a foe like this has to become the new baseline. Otherwise, any foe with attacks that work on mundane lines - roll to hit, apply defenses, apply DR on a hit, inflict injury - will likely be total wastes of time. Crit-fishing will still work just fine, but their defenses won't when a skill-30 guy succeeds by 20 on average and their defenses don't even reach 20. In fact, defenses in the mid-teens are rare on foes. 12-13 are more common, and 10-12 more common, still. In an attempt to make a boss (one on many a match for PCs) like this more like a worthy-level foe (one on one a match for a PC), it came mean just about total overkill against everything else. When that happens, as a GM, I really have no choice but to make high skill and high defenses and Feints less or not at all relevant. More trick monsters, less like-on-like challenges for the PCs. This is the Invulnerability Trap I have discussed before.

So I am considering skill-capping. Sure, that means more people pushing to DX 20, but they're going to do that anyway. But DX+10 as a skill cap is on my mind.

Might be seen as unfair, because I won't promise you'll never find a skill-25 guy with DX 14 on the other side, but it might stop people from pouring more and more and more points into a single axis of power and groaning when the adventures present broader axes of demand.


Another possible issue is, we can't do it without (blank.) That might be (our cleric), or (another wizard), or (buff spells on everyone), or (a fountain of DX and ST and Speed potions). It's a dangerous road ahead, for sure, but it's going to be tough if no one is willing to go without a massive amount of buffs. It will become a logistical hurdle to delving in new areas. This I am less concerned by. If PCs achieve overkill by spending thousands of dollars per delver per fight, it'll naturally become a bleed for excess cash. It's annoying as a GM when it means you can't really gauge the strength of the PCs - are they ST 15-20 or more like 21-25 due to potions, or DX 20+ due to potions, or immune to missile fire due to Missile Shield, or are they not? But it's not a problem.

My final concern is the caution trap, which is the two above plus more. If this was so hard here, what about a couple levels down . . . is it worse? Yes. Will that mean people insist on doing to this level what they did to every level above? That is to say, loot it down to the door hinges and not move on until they've "cleared" the level to maximize their point value before taking a further risk? They may. I sincerely hope this teaches them that a forward risk is the way to go - the big loot, the big fun fights, the cool exploration and insight into Felltower's internal logic as rewards for pushing the envelope a bit.

We will see.

Boss/Worthy/Fodder ranking the GFS II guys

The group the PCs just fought was:

One Master aka Gith
One Master aka Gith Lichor
Two Master aka Gith Axemen
Twelve ratmen (3 each phase, crystal, slime, and electric)

The PCs? Two knights, a scout, a wizard, and a martial artist, ranging from 343 points to 391 points. The scout at 343 is the only one below 360 points.

How would I rate the enemy based on 250 point characters?

Master/Gith: Boss. Should be able to solo a group of 3-4 250-point characters, at least draw against 5-6 of them.
Lichtor: Worthy. A little tougher than usual, but equal to a single 250-275 point character.
Axemen: Worthy/Fodder border. One on one should lose to any 250 point combatant, and probably edge out a 250 point support character (cleric, thief, etc.)
Ratmen: Fodder. Need to significantly outnumber a 250 point delver to stand a chance of victory; even then heavy losses are almost assured.

You can probably go back to the earlier fights and fill in the gaps - norker brutes are fodder, albiet tough fodder, and trokers are on the worthy/fodder border (worthy-like immunities, fodder-level attacks and defenses.) Golden swordsmen, worthy to worthy+. Obsidian Golems and Iron Spectres? Worthy to worthy+. The PCs managed to - over time - fight their way through a rigged battlefield (Deathtouch floor!) against a nice mix of foes with a variety of attacks. Over time, and a lot of delves and attacks, they wore these guys all down. Total casualties? Apart from the TPK from when they got teleported nude (heh) and captured and expended like so many Created Servants, a not much. Check the graveyard and see who got killed by these guys. Until last session, nobody.

It took a long time, but they ground down everything they faced at this landing of the second Giant Fanatastic Staircase aka GFS. They took home scads of loot.

This most recent fight was very last-stand like. Ambush in an open area, flying opponents vs. flying PCs (well, air-mobile, anyway), lots of magic, the PCs lacking non-potion healing . . . and a boss-level opponent . . . and it still ended up in a victory for the PCs. They won. The enemy suffered 16/16 casualties. The PCs, 3 of 5, only one of who was lasting (slain Duncan.) Call it net 1 out of 5.

I believe they will take some lessons from this.

What will come of this?

I'll go over some of my thoughts in my next post.

This much loot was always in Felltower.

Loot recently has had a big uptick in Felltower. It had a rep for being a stingy place, and I always argued this was because of how it was explored, not stocked.*

These last few delves are proving my point. The issue was often the PCs being risk averse - how can we find just enough loot to make our loot thresholds for XP with the minimum risk? They didn't go in saying, how can we find the most net loot, even if the risk means we spend some of it on healing and resurrection and replacing gear and potions? I understand the very old-school ideal of performing executions not fighting battles, but it made for a less adventurous grind.

The PCs ground down everything in every area, in Felltower and in the attached areas - Caves of Chaos, the Brotherhood Complex, the Lost City, and the Cold Fens - until not a coin that could be found was left behind. Only now are they putting on their big boy pants and wading into the hellscale of death and unfair wandering damage that are the lower levels.

And they're winning fights, even when they show up without a cleric and foolishly leave their wizard near someone with skill enough to take out a DX-boosted DX-monster with Great Haste. The loot? It's practically obscene.

People have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around. They're running out of things to buy. Why?

Because the loot down there is very, very good. Yeah, you might have to face a beholder and a packed of gargoyles. Or ranks of trorkers, norker brutes, Gith, golden swordsmen, rat-men, and constructs in a low sanctity zone. But then you walk out with multiple pieces of jewelry that each would meet your loot threshold for the group, and multiple magical items, and rare potions that you cannot purchase, and so on.

The danger multiplies as you delve deeper but the loot multiplies, too.

So does the fun. It's been a long time since anyone griped about wasting a Sunday doing basically nothing. They walk out of fights saying, "Whew!" and gleefully pouring over the loot.

It's high-risk high-reward. The low-risk low-reward won't do it, won't matter, and won't be fun.

So yeah, the look has spiked up with the risk. It was there the whole time. I'd been behind my screen watching people tiptoe around a winnable but brutal fight with $20K per person in loot behind it saying how they needed to find some place to make loot and it was too dangerous here.

Now they're taking their guys into the real Felltower. The top was the preliminaries. The gate level was a lot of fun and still a lot of fun. But more than half of what I wrote for Felltower is down below . . . along with a lot of the answers to questions that came up all the way back in 2011-12 during the Caves of Chaos.


I'm enjoying the reveals. And I'm glad people are willing to bet their paper men that they can win the fights, take the loot, and find out the answers.


* Well, as initially stocked, it was too low. But I corrected that quickly and did not add to but rather multiplied the amount of loot to what it is now. But that's for the top levels. These loot piles down here? Some of them were always that big . . .

Rules & Rulings from 9/20/26

Not a lot of rulings from yesterday's session, but here they are.

- Orders are from the Monday after session, unless the party returns Monday or later. In those cases it's +1 day after. The group always arrives late to town, and you can't run directly into town, sell everything on Sunday night at maximum available price, and then place orders for gear. That's a Monday thing.

- We rolling stunning and knockdown seperately, because I think that's more realistic and way cooler at the same time. We roll them in that order - stunning, knockdown. Does that matter? No. But sometimes people click the rolls twice and aren't sure which was for which roll. Stunning, knockdown.

- You can dodge the blast radius of an explosion when it's behind you, but only if you saw the shot pass . . . and are willing to dodge and retreat regardless of where it actually hits. You might guess wrong and dodge something that isn't a threat.

I ruled something else but I forget now what it was. I was pre-ruling on something before Vic asks when Jon tries it, but I forget what it was. Heh.

Related, what about bringing a not-fully-dead foe into town?

Town is safe, but only if the players also treat it as safe for everyone and everything else. So, bringing a weird creature to town to get help from in-town people to look at it? Borderline. Getting help killing it, or killing it, or potentially questioning it if it's able to be questioned? No. That makes town not safe across the board and thus not safe for the PCs, either. If the PCs rob NPCs in town, NPCs will rob the PCs in town. Kill NPCs? Kill PCs. It's all equal-ish, but determined by the GM not by anyone else. Rules-edging or boundry-edging by the players could result in disaster.

So nothing in town will do for killing this Gith they brought home. They could do it and did it, but there is going to be a bit of unpleasant association for the PCs for a while. I didn't warn them directly, but I don't think I needed to have to - town is safe unless you violate that, and this is pushing a boundary a bit.

They're looking to do some research, but because this is a special circumstance, I need explanation on what they're exactly doing, what they're hiring someone for, and then we'll make the rolls and pay the funds to deal with it. This isn't routine.

GURPS DF Session 226, Felltower 142 - Vat room battle - Part II

Date: 9/20/2026
Game Date: 9/6/2026
Weather: Warm and partly cloudy.

Characters
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (382 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (367 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (391 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (343 points)

Later:
Chop, human cleric (367 points)

We picked up mid fight.

The fight was brief but nasty. Percy, Hannari, and Duncan faced the solitary Master Gith, while Thor faced a half-dozen ratmen.

The Master Gith zipped back and forth, using his air move and good speed (though less than Great Hasted Hannari and Percy) to do a Move and Attack on Duncan, attacking with a runaround and Run and Hit to stun him with a pair of cuts to the neck. Duncan used Blink but blew his Body Sense roll and then his stunning check and his death check, and was Mortally Wounded. Hannari desperately slammed the Gith, doing 11 or 12 crushing with an 18-yard Move, but took 19 in return and bounced off. A second later the Gith cut Duncan down with a second cut to the neck and a blow to the skull. Duncan dropped, dead.

Percy clipped the Gith with a skull blow but didn't put him down. Hannari tried resorting to thrown weapons, pump-faking with ranged feints and then throwing some of his collection of bespoke meteoric all-metal kama to some effect, wounding the Gith twice. Percy moved up slowly, using Wait to threaten a zone of destruction without getting out ahead of Agar's Wand so he was maximally protected.

Thor cut down all of the remaining ratmen while this was happening, although one briefly menaced Percy and phased and dodged his blows before going berserk. Once that last one went down, Thor joined the boss fray. The Gith built up and threw a 12d Explosive Lighting at the ground in Percy's hex, hurting him (22 damage) and Thor (11 damage). Then he run away and back in. As he zipped past Hannari, he knocked him cold with a skull shot but dropped his sword on a lucky critical defense by Hannari (we run multiple blows against one foe as a cascading simultaneous sequence.) Thor tried a slam and missed, travelling a few yards past the dodging Gith. Percy rushed up but couldn't reach him. The Gith drew his small mace and lowered down to recover his sword.

That was the only mistake he made, and it cost him. Staying put to gather his dropped sword left him facing away from Thor, who cut him twice to the neck and dropped him, "dead."

Thor approached with his meteoric long knife, took the Gith's helmet off, and saw him staring blankly and white-eyed into nothing. He tried to cut its head off but couldn't. So he tried his flaming sword. Nope. They tried a silver blade, nope. So they used an Awaken spellstone - luckily Percy could remember where hyper-organized Hannari keeps them - and got Vlad and Hannari awake. Then Thor cut off the tip of Duncan's wooden sword (his Staff) and rammed it into the heart of the Gith. Then they did the same with a silver knife of Hannari's. They left them in going forward.

As this went on Chop caught up to the group (in other words, the player was waiting to join in the session.)

Nothing they could do would harm the fallen Gith.

They stripped the Gith of gear, checked the room with See Secrets and took a quick look at the vats (eww, fleshy sweaty embalming fluidy stinking white good that mvoed around and seemed to be forming body parts briefly) and walls (pictographs and weird runes.) They couldn't figure out what to do. So they took the Gith and the gear and left. Using See Secrets they spotted a large secret door with no way to open it and made a note where to find it next time.

It took some work but they made it out of the dungeon and into town.

They got Duncan Resurrection for 15,000, and found the church doesn't have any idea what to do with, or interest in dealing with, the Gith. Duncan claimed it was an Elder Thing after examining it with Hidden Lore, but it's Good vs. Evil, Bunny vs. Squid, and Holy doesn't have any special effect on the Squid axis. They know they regenerate, but something is keeping it from regenerating. In the end, they left the church, checked out their loot, and decided what to do next time. A check of the loot from the Gith, however, turned up a necklace with a vial on it . . . with the last remant of some human blood in it.

Notes:

- the PCs now have a dead Gith. The church won't fix this for them. They can't just leave it in town, or cast Entombment on it in town (illegal), or have it dumped into cement and bricked up in a wall. Oh no. They'll need to do this in the dungeon. So the will figure out how, but the plan is now to gag him, chain him up, carry him into the dungeon, and brick him up in a room with earth and turn it to solid stone. Which probably means a few wheelbarrow loads of dirt since Create Earth will end in 24 hours. They'll probaby add warnings and a cryptic note. Maybe some other delve in another day with another group will turn up the area and they'll break in, and steal the silver knife and sharped stake as loot . . .

- the loot was something obsecene, like $35,000 each. I forget offhand. They sold four suits of magescale, two without helmets (thanks Percy), two greataxes, a four sets of cloaks and boots that provide camo and silence, a few magical fencing swords and a mace, and a few other bits taken a previous delve and never identified. They kept a magical Gith longsword, a Salamander amulet, and not much else. Vlad took a bunch of jewelry in lieu of cash. They're wondering just how many more sets of magescale are out there . . .

- XP was 6 each for everyone but Chop - 4 xp loot, 1 xp new area explored. +1 for a split session delve. Chop got 5, since he wasn't there for part I. Generous, but I think fair - they gave him the loot, and snatching the 1 xp for new area explored felt silly. MVP was Thor for the killing blow and dropping 5-6 ratmen.

Preliminary Felltower Flight rulings

Answwering my own questions from last week:

What happens when you fall?

You suffer a two yard fall - as if a standing person's head (up in hex 2 from the ground) went to the floor (up in hex 0 from the ground.)

What happens when you lose consciousness?

You fall. See above. If the spell is still on when you wake up, you're still capable of flight. Otherwise, you fall at 11 yards per second - aka 32 fpsps - and normally after that.

What movement effects actually change your Air Move?

Magical effects will work normally - Haste, Slow, Great Haste, Speed potions. I can't think of much else.

What happens when you're stunned and knocked down?

You fall. See above.

How does posture affect Air Move?

No posture matters, but if you want to change posture you must use Change Posture normally, and combat effects are as normal.

Flight questions to be answered

I haven't made rulings on all of these, but with 0 to maintain Flight on the way, I will need to.

What happens when you fall?

What happens when you lose consciousness?

What movement effects actually change your Air Move?

What happens when you're stunned and knocked down?

How does posture affect Air Move?



My players especially - any others I'm missing?