How the draugr fell & loot

So the PCs finally destroyed the 33 elite draugr warriors in Felltower.

Why now, finally?

The main difference, in my opinion, was a combined set of three overlapping factors:

- significantly higher PC point totals

- willingness to make it a straight fight

- stronger will to win

PC point totals were much higher. Wyatt's player has the numbers on this, but it's 75-ish points if I recall correctly. Almost all of the PCs were much more powerful this time. The one that wasn't was Sir Bunny, who's relatively new, but he still held his own. The draugr did not change in power. It's just that skill 18-ish draugr were a terrific threat until the average PC had skill 20-ish and most of them were in the 25+ range thanks to potions enchancing DX. And some of the PCs - especially Wyatt - are built to fight humanoid foes with eyes and brains one-on-many. Tack on the ability to use significantly more and better buff magic on everyone and that effectively raises their point value.

A Straight Fight was acceptable to the PCs this time. Previous fights all broke down because they PCs insisted on only fighting the draugr with some kind of battlefield modification to force the druagr to accept damage for no return or to fight outnumbered against the PCs. That ranged from creating a magical wall with arrow slits, using magical servants to sneak up and spill alchemist's fire on the draugr, plans to sneak up and destroy them one by one, attempts to "raid" the draugr to kill a couple and drag them off so they could kill them one at a time, etc. We had hours of discussion that boiled down to "what spell will destroy them without damaging their equipment?" We had endless discussions about "what if they roll a 3?" and how to prevent that by not letting them melee. Even in this fight, the PCs were so worried about spear throwing they built tactics around standing and exchanging missile fire. But in the end they accepted that it would be a melee, and they wouldn't be able to make every character, in every second, fight at worst one-on-one. They accepted that they'd need to fend out multiple attacks and backed up this acceptance by minimizing flank attacks but not refusing to risk them.

A Stronger Will to Win is very heavily Wyatt, in my opinion. Wyatt pushed hard and often for this fight. He pushed back hard on any discussion of retreating or breaking off the fight. He didn't Leroy Jenkins the fight, but he argued strongly in favor of risk being a necessary part of the job. Minimizing risk was fine, but being unwilling to take risks wasn't on the table for him. So I credit him for making sure no one vetoed the draugr or insisted on "let's pull back" when losses were suffered. Even when Bruce went down, no one peeped about getting his body and running. It wasn't only him, but as the GM, I noted he consistently argued for the risk being worth the reward and insisting on taking that risk.

LOOT

So what was the loot?

33 gold eagles ($100 each)
32 silver and gold necklaces ($500 each, although 9 were badly damaged)
1 gold necklace with three rubies ($1000) that is also a Salamander Amulet.
32 suits of (Basic Set era) mail (they believe all) with Fortify +1 and Lighten 25% (+$2000 base value for the enchantments.)
1 suit of fine (Basic Set era) mail with Fortify +3 and Lighten 50% (+$26,000)
67 spears
~30 shields
31 oversized balanced broadswords
32 oversized balanced dwarven axes
1 oversized fine balanced broadsword with Accuracy +1 and Puissance +1
1 oversized fine balanced dwarven axe with Accuracy +1 and Puissance +1

The armor is mostly ~80% intact for pricing purposes, weapons ~70%. So the PCs stand to get a bit more for waiting until they can Repair them (note - this will cost some materials cost, worth ~10% of the base cost) and cast Analyze Magic without paying $400 per casting to verify the enchantments they believe are identical accross the board.

So that's what they ended with.