Prepping for Felltower & the "Rescue Mission"

I'm busy reviewing characters for Felltower.

Originally we'd planned to play Gamma Terra for our next session, but one of our core GT players can't make it.

So it's Felltower for our next game.

Quenton Gale reincarnated, which allows for some very easy explanation of how people know what happened during the last session. An eye-witness to all but the very end, and post-end eye-witness, is available.

Some loose ends were noted - before Quenton actually died, he got a glimpse of the decapitated heads* of most of his companions.

There is one lingering question - "Red Raggi" Ragnarson. He dropped with a vicious cut to the neck. But the players know out-of-game he wasn't dead, that Hard to Kill kicked in. They'll know in-game, at least the vets will, that Raggi has woken back up from being "dead" before.

On top of that, Raggi has Recovery and his random healing potion selection (rolled each time) came up with a Great Healing Potion. So he was at -1 x HP, and has a healing potion that, on average, will heal him 28 HP (4d, x2 for 23 HP).

As long as Sterick the Red didn't take his head, like he did the others, he could actually be alive . . . although water would be a major issue even if they have plenty of food. Quenton didn't see his head before he died.

And does Sterick have some ability to make undead? He had draugr bodyguards, but draugr are created by dead who can't rest in peace. You generally don't just make them. He may have had more powerful undead friends, or ways to make them, but there wasn't much detail available.

So Raggi is a big question mark. Alive, somehow? Undead? Simply and disappointingly dead? The last would be anti-climactic but it's what happened to everyone else.


Beyond that, there is the big concern that even backed by Vryce (Dryst's player and thus Dryst almost certainly being unavailable), Sterick will just add the new guys to the pile of corpses. They will be equal in numbers to last time, have a more effective core fighter, but all of the others will be significantly weaker. Quenton won't be, but he may or may not make the trip - given the option to bring a different PC his player may well do so.

"Let's add NPCs!" sounds like a good plan, except that it's a small spherical chamber with a lethal foe. Hirelings won't last more than a single sword or axe blow against Sterick, and will simply be in the way of better, more lethal PCs while alive and Bad Footing while dead. The better NPCs (Orcish Bob, say, or Deadeye Slim) are merely 125 points, and can hold their own against Worthy foes and beat up Fodder but a clear Boss like Sterick is beyond their ability to deal with. Remember those Deceptive Attacks at -7, backing up Feints - again, they're one second from being a movement obstacle and a $15,000 charge to Resurrect if you want to make up for that.


Also, the Wish the PCs have is quite limited. It's powerful, but it's not an all-powerful wish or even a Great Wish. It's a lesser version, subject to much greater limitations. So it's not a "alter reality to how you can phrase it in a single sentence" but rather a catch-all spell that does things normal spells can't or don't (or replicates what one spell can and does, if you like.) There is a clever plan to use it to allow to get the slain characters back, or at least make it possible to get them back despite a -1 per day Resurrection penalty. But it's not a Restore from Save Game or CTRL-Z spell. The players have both a chance to get their old guys back but don't have unlimited time and space in which to do it.

So we'll see how this goes.


* or the heads of his decapitated companions, however it's better to express that.