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Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Felltower: From the Jaws of Defeat comes . . . what now?

As noted last time, the PCs are in bad shape.

Aldwyn is dead.

Ulf is unconcious from injury, and effectively out of FP anyway.

Varmus is low on FP and hurt.

Gerry is effectively out of FP.

Bruce and Crogar are badly mauled.

Wyatt is fine, but armed with an axe.

"Tough Skeleton" is damaged but okay, but also effectively just a placeholder - it's only been attacked when there is no other possible living target.

All of the PCs are nude. They have no potions, power items, spellstones, or their usual plethora of backup weapons. They have nothing but their wits and skins and what they can take from their enemies.

And they're at their wits end. They've gotten desperate - punches to the groin, fireballs to the face (which does no extra anything, but does give a -5 to hit), and the like. It's a bit of flailing.

They're in a bad situation, as seen here:



Crogar and the tough skeleton are in the upper left, with Crogar in close combat with a norker he can't seem to Evade - it's not likely, anyway. He'd need to win a contest of DX with the norker getting a +5 . . . even a DX 9 foe would have better than 50/50 odds to beat him. They have a bit better than that.

Bruce is under a pile of norkers.

Wyatt, Varmus, and invisible floating-flat-against-the-ceiling Gerry are off to the side, having broken briefly free of the press.

They're outnumbered 17-18 to 6, with only 4 having useful combat contributions and only 3 being fighters.

So now what?

Possibilities include:

Surrender. It's possible - even likely - the enemy leaders will want prisoners. The PCs might be able to convince the norkers of that.

Gerry will try the ol' invisible wizard slink. He might make it. He might not. Wizards in GURPS are very easily able to evade capture in these circumstances, and generally are extremely hard to keep prisoner because of their ability to rip off spells. Gerry being a Mana Enhancer means this is going to be worse - and that's instantly detectable by anyone with Magery, so that won't be a secret. So he might not want to risk being a prisoner. It's possible he could swear not to try to escape in exchange for not being mutilitated or killed . . . any reasonable foe would want assurances. We'd have to play this all out.

In any case, it's unlikely they'll just be freed outright (possible, though), so a rescue mission featuring new characters might be required.

Do-or-die. We could play out a session as they fight more. They might pull out a victory and then figure out a way to escape.

Die. We could declare them all dead. That's the most likely statistical outcome to fighting it out at the odds as they are. It'll get worse if/when the enemy gets the door open again and more rush in. This is the fastest option, and means we can move right on to new adventures. The downside is the new guys are 250 points.

The hoped-for result of the enemy giving their stuff back, letting them go and giving them a reward-based mission, and then giving away enough info the let the PCs come back and kill them is not a very likely one.

I'm curious where my players will go with this. Or what others think of this turn of events.

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