Sakatha Showdown？

This coming Sunday we'll play DF again. The PCs have acquired, finally, a vial of unholy water. It should be effective in passing through the secret/supernatural doors in Sakatha's tomb.

This was the first unholy water they found since the evil temple in the Lost City, which Sir Bunny destroyed in combat because they were floundering for a way to destroy the unkillable priestess and jumped to the conclusion that it was the unholy water. And, amusingly, made a hard fight harder by being adventurers and trying to destroy the evil idol in the temple mid-combat because, you know, that was clearly the trick to the evil monster, too. Ah, the fun I have as a GM. Generally I don't like to punish adventurers for having adventures, or taking risks . . . but I do like to take advantage of the tendency of PCs to want to be like rabid wolverines or spiteful malcontents - destroy everything, touch everything, and spoil everything for anyone who follows. At the same time, I try to reward people who approach a task with some logic and thought, which is why, yes, there was a hidden cache of goodies (baddies?) in the altar in the brother's lair.

I digress, though.

It does look uncommonly like an attempted showdown with Sakatha, the first since Session 66.

I say attempted because my group is still my group, and I can see a bad combat result - a lopped off limb, a dead PC - cause a "well, we tried, we'll have to get more unholy water and come back when we're stronger" result. I hope not, but I've been wrong most of the time I see a showdown coming. Prove me wrong, kids! Prove me wrong.

It should be doable, for a number of reasons:

- the original dungeon was scaled for a group of 250-point guys getting rolling, and I'd assumed the'd be around 275 points or so when they reached the apex of the mission. The current group is all in the 300+ range (the lowest is ~325) and has two PCs above 400.

- the original group was smaller, as well.

- the original group was dramatically less well-equipped. The current group has a lot more magic items, more DR, better weaponry, larger power items, and a huge pool of healing items compared to the original group.

- the current group is better informed. Thanks to surviving Gerry and the ability to go back and read the summaries, the group has a better idea of what's coming.

It might not be, for other reasons:

- this group is extremely reluctant to engage in do-or-die missions. The closer to victory they get, the more cautious about pushing their advantage they get.

- past failure adds caution. Any prior failure has meant that the PCs are more careful and more concerned about repeating the loss.

- past failure adds difficulty. The enemy didn't grow weaker by massacring a party without any casualties of note . . . especially since there are a lot of undead there.

- the usual mix of "stay on target!" versus "Ooh! Shiney!" can derail the mission in either direction - passing on important things because of the former, or getting distracted by being thorough because of the latter.

- GIGO. Not all of the summary information is really accurate. It's just what I remembered to write down, based on how I remembered it, and not actually necessarily true. It's most true or close to it, but information is missing, details are off, and the closer to the end of the summary it is the more likely I was rushing through it to finish writing. More than once the PCs have based something on a specific summary detail, only to find out the detail wasn't exactly that they thought it was . . . or they made assumptions based on a summary item without realizing it wasn't ever quite stated to be the case.

I'm interested to see how this will come out. Again, I'm hoping for a decisive strike despite the tendency of the group to shy away from efforts that aren't attrition battle attempts, but we'll see. The PCs could have won with better choices with the original group, I'm certain, so they should be able to do so with this group . . . but we'll see!





That's a reminder, actually. I need to write my "attrition is the lack of a strategy" post. It's not a new idea, or my idea, but it might not occur to everyone. At one point it was a revelation to me.