GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Session 165, Felltower 118 - Beyond the Repelling Doors

Game Date: 1/2/22

Characters:
Aldwyn, human knight (360 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice (180 points)
Gerrald Tarrant, human wizard (420 points)
     3 skeletons (~35 points)
     1 tough skeleton (105 points)
"Mild" Bruce McTavish, human barbarian (340 points)
Wyatt Sorrel, human swashbuckler (378 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (366 points)

We started out in Felltower, with everyone hearing one of three rumors - about a "black mist" "down where you guys have been exploring," and about how orcs and goblins follow some race they call "the Masters," and that mana-devouring monsters - just like wizards - get more powerful by sucking the magic out of things.

They headed out to the ruins of Felltower.

Once in, they went down through the trap door . . . and then walked around underground to the main entrance and crossed it to the other side (lots of this today, honestly.)

They made their way to the second level, stopped to open the secret door near the stairs to the "fresh air room." They went in and checked, and yes, the air is still fresh. No, it's still not higher than normal Sanctity.

At the bottom of the stairs is one of the rotating statue rooms. The door opposite the stairs - site of the famous "naked crowbar fight," was gone and the passage was filled with rubble fill packed in and then shaped solid.

They decided it was too long to dig, but there is a trapdoor on level one. So they went back up, tripped off a crossbow trap (which missed everyone), set off (magical?) alarm bells, and forced their way into the big room with the scorched ruins of . . . lots of wood. They searched and found the trap door. It, too, was sealed - someone shaped the stone door into a solid mass. Ulf put Silence on the center of it and Bruce and Aldwyn and the new skeleton took alternating whacks at it with picks. They broke it apart, and the pieces fell to the (not-silenced) floor below. They put Missile Shield on Aldwyn, then sent down a Wizard Eye to look around - the room was as before, but the two exits not blocked by rubble were blocked with floor-to-ceiling barricades full of dirt. They used Silence again, pounded in some spikes, and had Aldwyn climb down a rope ladder.

At the bottom Ulf used 7 Silence spells to cover the barricade - Area 1 is free to maintain, Area 2 is not - and they broke it up. He used more to cover the next section, and they broke that up.

They advanced on the orc hole cautiously, but no one was around. They made it all the way to the end of the hall to the left . . . and found it, too, was plugged up with stone. They wanted to dig there to avoid going back but some of them remembered their map shows a mere 10', but the hallway is definitely longer than that. So they turned around and retraced the steps to the initial plug in the statue room from hours before.

There they dug, again using 7 Silence spells to cover the area they dug in, breaking up a 2 yard by 2 yard area to walk through (the barbarian hunched.) They needed 5 iterations - 35 castings - to break through. About halfway there, it unraveled. Ulf rolled a 17, and critically failed.

A smokey, shadowy figure appeared behind him in the little mining hole where Bruce and he and Alwyn were crammed, and howled - most shrugged off the terror, but Bruce did not, and promptly passed out. The figure stuck its hand into Ulf's heart. He took some injury, failed a HT roll, and dropped . . . mortally wounded. Aldwyn got his swords out in the tight spot. He stabbed at it uselessly and then also dropped, mortally wounded, as it reached right through his guard and touched him.

Wyatt came running as Gerry yelled, "It's a shadow demon - magic weapons and sunlight!"

Varmus backed off, as did Gerry, and Wyatt engaged it, slashing between its wings and hitting the head twice. Neither blow did much but clearly did something - it was Diffuse but his magic sword could at least hurt it. Gerry put Blur on Wyatt and Shield on himself. It kept trying to hit Wyatt or Gerry, but they managed to avoid it. It dodged many of Wyatt's attacks.

Varmus eventually created a 4d Fireball and threw it at the creature's back . . . burning a huge hole in it! Wyatt finished it off moments later.

It was gone, but their cleric was dying, as was Aldwyn. Gerry defaulted Esoteric Medicine with a 7 . . . used Luck . . . and rolled a 7 on his third roll. Ulf and Aldwyn made their checks to not die in the meantime. They fed five healing potions to Ulf and then pumped him to full on FP with Lend Energy, then used an Awaken spellstone to get him up. He cast Stop Bleeding on Aldwyn, and then they did the same with Aldwyn.

Once everyone was back up, they resumed casting Silence and digging. Eventually, they broke through.

They made their way to the lens room. There, Ulf put Hide Thoughts on everyone except the skeletons. They approached the repelling doors - and were not thrown back!

They checked the doors - no handles, hinges, marks, words, glyphs, symbols - six-fingered hand or otherwise, or other indications of what to do. They tried to force the doors but failed. Ulf whispered something to Aldwyn, who then proclaimed, "All hail the Brotherhood, by the Brotherhood let me pass." The doors opened.

Ulf cast See Secrets on himself but rolled a 17. As far as he knew, it worked, but it had no effect.

Inside was a circular room ~12 yards across. In the center was a blood-stained tripod-based basin. Glowing runes line the walls. They pointedly didn't look at them. They spent some time checking the basin, the blood (old), the amount used in the past (a lot), and the three pairs of doors leading out. Eventually, unable to go anywhere, they had Gerry read the glyphs. He could get the gist of them (a Hidden Lore (Magical Writings Lore)-3 roll). The room was the Chamber of Blood, and it needed the blood of a creature with Magery to open the doors and "activate the chamber." Gerry sliced himself open and let 2 HP worth of blood flow in. He was faint and woozy but the doors opened.

Beyond on either of the left and right side doors were identical rooms. Each had a summoning circle and glowing-glyph instructions to summon an elemental within. One was the Chamber of Tears, and Gerry was able to largely understand it wanted for a water elemental. The other was the Chamber of Breath, and needed an air elemental.

They found a spiderweb of tunnels beyond the center doors, and found a number of identical doors they couldn't open. At each and every door, they tried "All hail the Brotherhood, by the Brotherhood let me pass." It did not work again.

They marked a few intersections with chalk, and eventually found the Chamber of Crystal (aka "the Quartz Room.") It had a big crystal not unlike the lenses, but much bigger (10', not 4'), and humming. Gerry determined it was something like a power item, but how big and for whom he didn't know. It has glyphs which said "From One Must Be Made Many.” They decided this must mean someone must blast the crystal with a fireball or sunbolt reflected off of the crystals outside, since they were "many" and the spell was "one." Gerry argued they shouldn't be casting damaging magic spells at the humming crystal. (They wanted his expert opinion on the amount of damaging spell the crystal could take, but Gerry lacks any materials science skills)

They stationed PCs around strategically, and then set up the crystals. Varmus took a shot with a 1d Fireball, and it didn't reflect. So Ulf tried 1d Sunbolt, which didn ricochet around and then left a scorched, black mark on the humming crystal. Ooops.

They didn't have any further ideas, so they closed the doors and left. On the way home, they stopped at the "Saints" room, had Wyatt pick the lock on the door, and used Seeker on one of the missing heads. Ulf got nothing.

After that, all that was left was a trek to Stericksburg, where they arrived nearly the next dawn.

They ordered some scrolls and potions and whatnot, including Summon Elemental scrolls to open the doors and the anticipated other doors.

Notes:

- Wyatt's player is looking for alternatives to heavy armor on his Swashbuckler, but can't seem to figure out a way to go that keeps him from getting squished from a critical hit or a failed defense but also weighs little. I don't have one other than setting the concern aside, but my group is extremely DR-demanding. Even the lightly armored guys have DR 5+, and many of them have DR 8+ even for non-melee combatants. He's already maxed out his defense-enhancing advantages.

- Gerry got a new skeleton to replace Rahtnar. People started calling him the "big" skeleton. I stomped on that. It's SM 0, and no bigger or smaller than the others. Once it gets called "big" people will want to "just double check" its SM, help by reminding people it is SM +1, ask for a ST discount for it when it is upgraded, get it oversized weapons, want to use it for cover, etc.

- Switching digging places was a classic example of a) thinking there must be an easier way, and b) trading real world time for in-game time savings. It took some in-game time to get to the trap door and hack it open, then explore to the plug, then get back . . . but it took a real-world hour or so of exploration and movement to do, and in the end they needed to head back the way they came anyway.

I offered the IQ roll to remember that their map is wrong just to speed thing along. Otherwise, they were looking at ~10-15 yards of rubble fill shaped into a solid mass . . . all backed up against the dig by the orcs in the orc hole. I'm sure the players were confident they could hold off any number of orcs basically forever, but enforce enough FP loss and they'd lose. So the dig was likely to be a constant battle for no real purpose.

The dig was fast, but it's BL based and Bruce has a 106 BL. Human norm is 20 BL. He's better than 5 workers.

- I almost never use the Critical Spell Failure Table. I just had no good ideas for the result of the critical failure. So I rolled, and rolled an 18 and Ulf summoned a demon. The arguments immediately began - it can't be the worst possible result, because it was a 17, not an 18 on the critical failure. Sorry, tables don't work that way, and the rules nowhere specify that a 17 can't had really nasty, potentially fatal consequences simply because 18s also exist. So I kept it. Ulf's player argued that it was a Holy spell, cast for "good" purposes, so . . . also no. The out in that table entry is way to stop saintly Father Healicus from summoned The Devil while casting Major Healing or Bless or something of that sort, not to stop a delving cleric using Silence to help dig past a barricade to get at potential loot. So no on that, too.

- This one is on me - I let Gerry default Esoteric Medicine. I asked my players to look up the skill and the Healer's Kit, and they reported it didn't say you needed the kit. I looked up the skill but in the interest of time I didn't look at the kit until we had a break later as someone had it in sight. I should know by now - they don't read past the first sentence, and glance around for numbers. What they told me was the first sentence of the description and that is gives a +1 to the skill, and that's that.

No.

What the kit says is this:

"Basic equipment for one speciality of Esoteric Medicine. Required to use that skill - but in situations where it or First Aid would do, gives +1 to either skill."

So it's required. Gerry didn't have a 7, he had a 7 and a -5 for no appropriate equipment for the skill, or a 2. He would have needed to take Extra Time to even earn a 3 and a chance to roll a 3-4. They should have been forced to march everyone home and end the delve right there, except for this error.

A player later argued that the "required" bit didn't make sense, because why is it required but also gives you a +1 to skill rolls? I pointed out that's not what it says; it says that you get a +1 if you have an either/or case of Esoteric Medicine/First Aid being something you can roll. For cases where Esoteric Medicine is the only thing, it is a +0.

I forgot this once before, and the players used that case - default roll without a kit - to justify this one. I won't forget this again. I'm fine with occasional generosity, but this was a bit above and beyond as they lacked any of the tools or other solutions despite facing this situation before.

- So yeah, based on those points above, it seems like my group has completely morphed into a rules lawyer / munchkin group. They do roleplay their guys, but every rule is quoted chapter-and-verse to argue positive cases for the PCs and lots of stuff is scanned, misread, or ignored to avoid negative cases.

- I've said it before and I'll say it again - GURPS is extremely generous with injury recovery. Magic sped the process, but literally all it took was some HT rolls and then everyone was healed and happy and as good as new. I've gotten fairly harsh with guys with -96 HP wandering around just because they didn't fail any HT rolls in combat and have 4 HP left before automatic death . . . Mortal Wounds probably deserve an after-effect, too. You literally were dying with a tiny chance of recovering on your own, and then you're fine? Eh. Magic should help fix that but it shouldn't be a skill roll followed by a few cheap-o potions. At the moment, the only thing that has an actual long-term effect is dismemberment or death. Anything short of that - anything at all - is easily solved by routine means. I don't mind dying being hard, but nearly dying should have a bit more of a lasting effect.

- If you know the answers to the puzzles, please keep them to yourself. This area is meant to be entirely player-facing, and no one in town and no sages have any research to share on this. So there won't be rumors about how to get by, and I won't approve comments that seem to be giving hints.

- XP was 2 each for exploration - new areas plus a rare special area. MVP was Gerry for his Esoteric Medicine roll.