GURPS DF Session 223, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part III

Real World Date: 5/31/2026

Game Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We started off in battle, with Hannari getting up after being healed from crippling injuries by Chop. The Gith "Master" and several of the other Gith tried to overwhelm him with attack after attack. The master, Hannari's peer in (DX-potion-boosted) skill, traded Feint-and-Attack combinations with him while the others and a few golden swordsman just launched as many attacks as they could. Hannari had Blur 5 on but it didn't seem to make a big difference against the Gith, and to a lesser extent the golden swordsmen. Chop's curses stopped at least one critical from bypassing Hannari's defenses and getting to his "low" DR (only 8 . . .).

Meanwhile, Thor, Percy, and Rogar finished off the remaining non-sleeping trokers. It took a bit of work but with all three of them having Affect Spirits on their weapons. It took a few seconds but they butchered the rest of them and moved on to help Hannari.

The Gith were pushed back, as Hannari took out two of the wounded, downed golden swordsmen as they fought from seated. Another gith fell, and the remainder moved back past the 2-yard wall Duncan made to cut the battlefield in two. The enemy set up on the other side, so the PCs could come through one after another but they could double-team the PC lead fighter. It worked, sort of.

Hannari rushed the gap, throwing a sleep grenade at the rear of the group to take out the trokers. But a waiting golden swordsman cut the grenade out of the air as it passed through his hex, shrugged off the sleep effect, and then struck twice. This was the one who'd been injured by Vlad's arrows earlier and then relegated to the back ranks by the flow of combat. He hit. Hannari rolled two 17s, with a net defenses in the low 20s. 17-18 always fails. Both hit, and random location but them both at the legs. The first did 20 cutting past DR, and lopped off Hannari's right leg. The other did 15 past DR, which is 1 point less than enough to dismember, and just crippled Hannari's leg. He dropped to the ground.

Rogar pushed up behind, eager to get into the fight. Thor snaked out a few sword blows. And then Percy waded into the fray. He critically hit the Master, stunning him with a skull shot. Over his next two turns he rolled one more, and then two more critical hits, downing another gith, a goldem swordsman, and a thorker. The enemy was left with a handful of trokers, the Master, and a wounded Gith. Hannari crawled back to Duncan. Duncan let loose with an Explosive Lightning spell, using Chop's eyes to aim (see the notes) but it only clipped a few for minor injuries.

Duncan shifted to putting Flight on Hannari, which got him back into the action. Thor remembered he had Flight on and moved further into the fray. But they found the Master was gone - he'd briefly gotten out of sight and then was gone. They simply swarmed the wounded gith in the hallway and the half-dozen or so trokers and made short work of them.

With that, the field was theirs. Thor and Rogar butchered the trokers, cutting off their heads to ensure they were dead. There was some talk of burning them, or throwing them all down the staircase opening to the depths below, but in the end they did not. They took the axes off of the couple of norkers, and every one of the fallen gith, with them. They also looted the fallen golden swordsmen of their various jewelry, magical force bracelets, and bone swords. They beheaded them, too.

They then headed back to town, gathering their slorn hides and eggs.

Notes:

- The PCs would have delved deeper, except that Hannari missing a leg made that difficult. They're concerned that they can whip up a bunch more mooks and re-set the level's defenses, but pushing on didn't make much sense.

- I ruled for Duncan's lightning attack as follows: He's blind, and Invisible, and airborne, and he's shooting at a target that he's seeing through a third-party's eyes. So he can't see from the launch point, and can't see the launch point but knows where it is. I gave him the -10 for shooting blind but not the skill cap of 9. It seemed fine.

- I kind of wish we didn't use that long, long ago house rule about 3-4 bypassing Missile Shield. Mostly because it ends up with a lot of "well, I guess I'll just shoot at the guy and hope" turns, which take time and rarely matter, plus resolving Hitting the Wrong Target, usually at an angle as the PCs exclusively shoot from height these days. And it's out of line with how all the other immunities work. Imagine if I said that Resist Poison worked except on a 17-18, or Resist Fire except on a 17-18, or that you could ignore the Armor spell with a 3-4 . . . it would make perfect sense. I doubt anyone would like this, but it's a genuine idea. It would take the logic ("a perfect hit can bypass magic") and extend it to all defenses magic and all offensive effects. It's an odd exception - you can literally make yourself immune to fire, poison, lightning, acid, and more yet worry that your perfect defense against arrows doesn't always do it . . . and only fails against the most lethal shots.

- I ruled that you can hold your breath and ignore a breath-based attack like a Sleep grenade, but it's not a free, defensive action. They can Dodge out of the area effect with Retreat, of course, but that's always been true.

- MVP was Duncan's player, as he ran Percy during most of the session. It was heavily luck dependent, but his run of 4 criticals in 3 turns shifted what could have been a disaster (Hannari being crippled) into a minor problem.

- Speaking of Hannari being crippled, air-movement spells make a mockery of crippled legs, floor traps, bad footing, and combat ranks. Hannari had a leg amputated and a leg crippled and it took him out of the fight only for a couple of seconds. Once Flight kicked it, he was good as new, or actually better. Walk on Air makes for very crowded fights, as people tend to cluster in tight and walk "over" their friends. It encourages people to clump up and fight in tight as they have vertical space to fight in. Meanwhile, they're effectively immune to mobility kills. This is to say nothing of the effects on travel.

- The PCs took home 6 xp each: 4 for loot, 2 for the additional two sessions it took to resolve the fight. The take-home of loot, minus a few magic items they kept, was around $48K each. Rogar has joined at a very good time . . .

- They also took all twelve hands from the gith and had them taxidermied, at $100 each. They kept them to use to touch doors that won't open to their own hands.

DF Pre-summary

We finished our big fray today in DF Felltower.

- dozens of thorkers were slain

- the "gith" were repelled and the field held

- magic was critically failed

- and crits rolled on endlessly for a brief, but very destructive, span of time.

Full details tomorrow.

Why the low posting rate?

Long story short:

- it's a busy time of year for me

- we're gaming a little more infrequently, and I generally post about game sessions these days

- I'm not doing any game-related writing or reading at the moment

- and while I am playing Skyrim in my free time, it's not really inspiring any posts . . . yet.

But I do have a few things I need to get written out . . . and we will have a game session on 5/31!

GURPS DF Session 222, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part II

Real World Date: 4/26/2026

Game Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We picked up with Hannari, who tops the speed order, drawing a spellstone (it would turn out to be Blur 5) as golden swordsmen approached him slowly.

Some foe threw a smoke nageteppo to the front edge of the fight, right in front of the PCs, covering up the hallway between Rogar, Percy, the blinded Thor, and the wave of "Gith" and trorkers.

Percy kept smacking trorkers, but lacking Affect Spirits he wasn't managing much. Thor was blind and unable to find a foe, and wasn't willing to swing wildly to hope to hit one. Rogar was getting swamped in close combat by more trorkers but thanks to Enraged he wasn't backing off to make space. He tried to check one down with his shield but his foe rolled a 17 and fell - good enough.

Meanwhile Vlad spent a few arrows on the golden swordsmen, wounding one with a critical hit but otherwise watching them bat his arrows aside like swordsmen in a Zhang Yimou movie. Hannari was hit with a spell by the lead Gith. A second later, it was clear what it was - Levitation. The Gith moved the slightly-elevated (Walk on Air) Hannari three yards back, leaving only a hovering Vlad (Walk on Air) in the hallway. Five of the six golden swordsmen ran in and filled in the gaps between both sides of the fight - Thor, Percy, Rogar, Chop on one side, Vlad and Hannari on the other.

Hannari tried to move out of sight and into a good fighting spot, but the Gith spun him around and out of the way. The golden swordsmen rushed in, but the one right behind him took a shot at Vlad instead of Hannari's back (see below for a note on this.) Chop used Restore Sight on Thor, and Duncan cast Soul Rider on Chop so he could see without fixing his own vision.

Meanwhile Chop tried Command on the golden swordsmen but wasn't able to get it off the first time and failed to overcome resistance the second time. More foes piled in. Trokers went down under Thor's blade. Then gith moved in to back them. One golden swordsman hacked Rogar in the arm. Hannari took out a kama and did swing/impale to a golden swordsman, and used his grip on his all-metal meteoric iron kama to keep himself anchored to the ground to avoid the Levitation of the Gith. He inflicted 19 control points in the process with a hard hit - he's amped up on a strength potion as well as a dexterity potion, so he's ST 20+ and IIRC DX 26. The swordsman tried to pull himself off and managed to get a few CP off, but then tried to chop the kama to break it. It was parried (ugh, rules issue here). A few seconds later, after Hannari lopped off his left arm, a golden swordsman crippled Hannari's arm on a lucky critical hit. Naturally, a second later Chop healed him completely, but the weapon in that hand was released all the same.

As this happened, Vlad wounded one gith in the eye with an arrow, and Percey smashed one down with a skull-shattering hit.

Duncan started to rip off Great Haste spells, our newer version, on Thor and Hannari . . . and they began to roll.

We left it there.

Notes:

- I dislike how often my NPCs have issues from the VTT. DR 0 when they clearly have DR, especially common when I use the Mook Generator to create foes. Torso DR but nothing else when they're imported from GCS. Oh, and it ran like a slug today for a couple of hours - and basically made the first two runs through the turn order take 50 minutes or so each until I figured out the techical problem.* Aargh, VTTs.

- The GURPS module is doing a good job of adding in the effects of Status Effects. Yay, VTTs.

- Because someone asked, no, you don't get any kind of sense or cue to what effect a spell has on you when you fail to resist, if it has no otherwise visible effect. That's what Identify Spell is for.

- Vlad wondered if these Gith/Masters/Bales/whatever have anything written, so he can learn more about them. You know, they never talk about themselves. They fight and fight and fight and he doesn't really know them. Heh. Anyway, I know all about them. How much is something the PCs can find out? Probably a fraction, but the secret to good characters is to understand things about them not everyone can see, in my experience. We'll see how much they learn.

- MVP was Duncan for his two Great Haste spells that are turning the fight.

- We had a rules disagreement about that turn-Hannari-with-Levitation move and what constitutes a back shot. More another day. But related rulings:

1) You can Wait and use your step to undo some of the movement of a Levitation spell. If you want to attack as part of that triggered Wait, you need to specify what you'll do ahead of time. If you want to use a ranged attack and you want to cover multiple possible targets, it's Opportunity Fire.

2) Immovable Stance doesn't affect Levitation. Immovable Stance just does what it says - and nothing additional. Keep this in mind when someone asks about using this to resist getting picked up after a grapple.

3) Levitation has ST 0 for purposes of moving through resistance. A handhold is sufficient to keep you from being moved around. A hand against a wall will keep someone from moving you up or down while you have contact with that wall; it wouldn't stop them moving you away from the wall. Giving it ST or making it a Quick Contest suddenly makes it a potent grappling spell. No thanks.


* I run in Chrome, which seems to handle Forge best. I eventually logged off, cleared my cache, turned off hardware acceleration, restarted, cleared my cache, turned hardware acceleration back on, and restarted Forge. That worked. No, I don't know why, but I do know I've had the occasional issue with hardware acceleration doing weird crap like this so I just suddenly realized I hadn't tried that. Thank goodness I did. I wish I'd remembered immediately and gotten a few more seconds of combat done.

Felltower pre-summary

Not much to say on this one:

- we continued the fight

- the formation broke down

- the PCs got swamped by foes

- massively superior PCs are proving the edge in cutting down the swaths of the enemy - think Affect Spirits, Great Haste, max-roll DX potions, Blur 5, Shield 6, etc. - and healing is keeping up the people hit by crits.

Still a lot of fight to go, but the PCs are generally in a good spot.

Felltower tomorrow

We'll pick up in combat in Felltower tomorrow. Summary probably Monday, unless we end early enough tomorrow. We'll see. Even with a won fight I think we'll go another session after this one. With a slugfest . . . who knows how long it will take?

Repetiton of the Boring Bits & Felltower

I repeat the same things over and over in Felltower.

"Okay, you head out of Stericksburg through the North Gate, across the dwarf-made Stone Bridge over the polluted Silver River, to Sterick's Landing. You pass the broken remains of a statue of a horse with Sterick on it, only his headless and armless torso remains. You pass through the slums on the north side of the river and up the winding track to the top of the mountain."

Every time.

Then it's picking an entrance, and making your way through the same tunnels, time after time after time.

You want to get to the "apartment level?" You have to walk there, and talk me through getting there. You have to tell me how you open doors, and who makes the roll and who is holding a crowbar or just shouldering it. You have to tell me who touches the doors with the six-fingered hand print to get by.

Every time.

You have to describe it all. No skipping ahead. If a passage is blocked and needs squeezing through, or a Will roll, or whatever, you have to make them.

Every time.

Why?

Players sit up and take notice when they change.

If I only ever mentioned the new things, and glossed over the repetition, they wouldn't have the same impact. You can argue this, but I used to do the "gloss over" thing. I pretty much told you what to pay attention to, because I only told you what was new and different.

But since they are always hearing the same things . . . and then hear different things, it piques their interest. It makes the dungeon feel more alive rather than just a series of connected encounters you can fast-forward to once you've dealt with what's beyond.

They don't always notice. There were signs, for example, that some people took residence in the dungeon for a while. The players didn't really pay too close attention to the differences in descriptions of noises and sights in the upper levels of the dungeon. A few months on, the NPCs finished what they wanted to finish, and left. The PCs did eventually find their camping grounds, but never when they were there or what they did. I said a few things, no one thought they were important ("Stay on target!"), and they missed something. But equally, they've noticed very small differences in the dungeon and made real progress out of them.

Your choices matter.

Did you smash up the portcullis near the main entrance to block some monsters from using it? Now you can't use it, either. You killed off some monsters to get rid of a problem that slowed you down? You get the benefit of having smoothed out your travel path.

This has forced the players to spend time re-opening entrances. It gets people checking little mysterious oddities every time, hoping they'll provide a distraction, a reward, or a shortcut. It gets people trying to solve problems that annoy them on the regular. Yeah, the orcs were a problem for a long time. The PCs smashed them repeatedly. Why? Because they annoyed the shit out of the players every session they had to pay a toll, or deal with orc patrols, or blockede. If getting deeper in the dungeon was just a quick, "We pay our toll and now we're on level five!" or whatever, they wouldn't have done it. They cleared the well to make their path deeper easier. They make lots of decisions based on the repetitions.

I know for a fact this has cost me players. Not everyone has stuck my game out because of this. But it's okay. I like the two benefits I get. And if it costs me some players, it's okay. My style of game isn't for everyone. I don't try to make it so. I think it's how megadungeons function well. And it's how Felltower has evolved to be, and I like it.