GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Session 181, Brotherhood Complex 4, Part I

Date: 3/5/2023

Characters:
Ambassador Durinn, dwarf cleric (~265 points)
Belmek Battlebeard, dwarf barbarian (~260 points)
Desmond MacDougall, human wizard (~290 points)
Kel Blackwall, half-elf scout (250 points)
Sigur Hondguthann, human holy warrior (250 points)


Desmond brought some youngster he met at church and brought him along to adventure with them. Kaylee, still out with a healing broken leg, sent along her brother, Kel, a scout.

They all hiked off to the valley where the cultists have their complex.

Kel checked for traps and found none, so they headed in and past the massive doors.

The headed down the stairs, checking for traps as they went, and moved with their scout in the lead. He looked around the corner at the bottom of the stairs and saw, in the fringes of some torchlight ahead, a shield-toting cone-hatted cultist. He took careful aim . . . and the cultists ducked around the corner. (Carrying your own light source makes it impossible to sneak on targets looking your way, really.)

The PCs rushed up as they heard someone call out that they should sound the alarm. The reached an intersection and ran into an ambush by three cultists with crossbows - two left, one right. Belmek blocked one from the right but was hit from the left, and the bodkin point left a mark. Desmond put Missile Shield on Kel. Kel shot the cultists to the right, wounding him, but then moved left.

Belmek rushed left, backed by Kel, who followed while shooting. The two cultists dropped their crossbows and readied shields and swords. Belmek followed them, hurling an axe, but it his foe's half-ready shield. The two cultists fought Belmek and Kel, backed by Desmond and Durinn, and quickly cut them down.

Meanwhile, Sigur moved to the right. His foe was quite a ways down the hallway, so even at a full rush - Move 3 - it was taking a while to get to the cultist. His foe backed off slowly, and then eventually took off, leaving Sigur behind.

They PCs dragged the bodies off to the "barracks" and stripped them of coinage, crossbows, quarrels, quivers, and (cheap) swords. They moved on from there. Accompanied by a lot of squabbling over which way to go and how, they headed towards where they were ambushed last time. They eventually reached a door and forced it open, and found an empty small room. They carefully searched and tapped the walls but didn't find any secret doors.

They found and forced a second door open, and found the same. Again, a search found nothing. They noted that the cultists weren't really using the complex that thoroughly.

They passed the last ambush area, and went through an open door to a larger, roughly six-sided room. In the center of the floor was a 6' x 3' six-fingered hand print in black. They avoided that and forced open a door to the right . . . but then Sigur noted that doors that opened easily probably were used more often. They found one of the other doors was like that, and opened it. Someone suggested that the stuck doors were probably the way to go - Sigur again, I think - because those areas were less likely to be looted. Durinn surmised that the complex probably had loot the cultists didn't find, and that would likely be behind stuck doors.

All that said, they went through the easily-opened door. They moved along, mapping now, taking their time and forcing doors as they found them. Soon enough, though, they rushed forward into a hallway to a door . . . and took crossbow bolts from their left. Three cultists stood around on the fringes of a flickering circle of torchlight. Kel was narrowly missed by one bolt but two hit Sigur, causing a minor leg wound and a major body wound. He dropped, stunned and knocked down.

They rushed forward, led by Belmek. Kel and Desmond enaged with arrows and ice daggers, respectively. In short order, Belmek caught one of the cultists and cut him down. The others started to run. The party pursued, Belmek slowing as the cultists got away because he didn't want to go running off into the darkness alone. But then Kel caught up, and shot down the cultists one by one. The first was shot down fairly close to the fight encounter. The second was run down much further down a hallway.

They dragged the bodies back and took their crossbows, quivers, quarrels, and coins. One had mail, though, so they dragged him aside. They forced open a nearby door, hoping to find a place for Sigur to change into the cultist's superior suit of armor. They found stairs down. Desmond declared stairs a bad place to change, so they moved into a new area and forced another door open. They found a small room with a door on the far end. They just stayed there for the 10 minutes it took from someone to strip the cultist, Sigur to take his armor off, and then mail himself up from head to toe. Well, almost - he took the mail coif but didn't put it on, sticking with his segmented helmet, because of encumbrance. They left his old mix of mail and leather (Guard's armor from Delvers to Grow).

They headed downstairs. They made their way around some corridors, poking at the dead end they found in one, finding nothing. Eventually they reached a door and forced it open.

Beyond it was a junk-filled room with bits of more junk underfoot (I said, think of an attic - all hexes Bad Footing.) In it were a handful of hooded green-skinned humanoids with big crab claw left hands. Belmek threw his crowbar (and missed), fast-drew his axe, and ran in. (He didn't realize he was shieldless - I'm not sure why, since you can't reasonably force a door with a crowbar with a shield readied, not without a penalty he did not take.) Sigur followed.

The hooded figures were identified quickly by Sigur as demons - and Truly Evil! He moved to block the door. Belmek, however, was quickly surrounded and grappled. The Demon Grunts clamp down with their claw hand, hold on, and grind away. It took only a few moments for Belmek to be grappled by 3-4 of them and rendered helpless.

Sigur blocked the door, as Durinn put Protection from Evil 5 on him. He slashed at a demon and connected with the neck, inflicting a massive wound - which the demon largely ignored despite the splash of black-green ichor and torn flesh. It grappled at him and he defended. He slashed it another time, but then two managed to grapple him in quick succession. He cut the hand off of one that did so, as Desmond put Shield 5 on him. Sigur slashed another again, with help from Kel and Desmond (mostly Kel - see below) and it POOOFED! away in a cloud of greenish, sulphurous smoke. But another stepped up and critically hit him and grappled, rendering Sigur helpless.

Kel and Desmond supported from behind, each picking a demon and attacking it. Desmond threw Acid Ball after Acid Ball, hoping to kill the demons or wear down their DR with corrosion attacks. Kel shot another in the vitals over and over, or at least where vitals would be if it was a human (aka, -3 for a maybe.) It didn't seem bothered overly - they'd get hurt but not reach to the injuries. So he switched from his Cornucopia arrows to cutting arrows he'd brought along. They didn't provoke any better of a reaction, and his damage was insufficient to cripple an arm and his position behind Sigur made it impossible to target a grappling claw directly.

Durinn put Protection from Evil 5 on Belmek, who was being ground apart by the claws, which helped considerably. He also cast Lend Vitality and Stop Bleeding on him, too, to keep him up.

Sigur was helpless, so he decided to pray to the Good God to help free him. He has a 7, and rolled an 8. Nope. Meanwhile he was being badly mauled - his DR (4) plus his protection spell (5) adds up to a nice 9 DR, but the enemy would routinely exceeding that. He was making death checks.

Durinn prayed a moment later, asking for the Good God to free Sigur from the demons grappling him and also heal him if possible. He had an 8 and rolled an 8. One of the demons - the one with the most CP - let go. The other held one.

But that was enough for Sigur to cut down another demon, getting himself mostly free of grapples - only one is holding on for 9 or 10 CP. Durinn followed with a Great Healing spell, fully healing the horribly mauled Sigur to full HP.

We had to stop there for time - there are six of these demon grunts left. One missing a claw, another badly hurt, four more with no injuries at all. The PCs decided they need to gang up, but we didn't have real world time to resolve that.

Notes:

- point totals will be approximate, now. More on that another day.

- So Douglas Cole played today, remotely. He blogged about it. I'll read that after this posts. He fits in well, but I knew we gamed well together because we've gamed together before.

- We just ruled it took 10 minutes to un-armor and re-armor. There are no guidelines handy for that in DFRPG, or elsewhere, really. Luckily Doug wears mail in real life and said that seemed reasonable. I'm pretty sure his guy spent 2 character points on the cash for his armor and then promptly replaced it with a foe's armor. It helped once against some bolts, though.

-Sigur had a tough time in some fights, running off the wrong way with Move 3 which didn't make it easy to get back into the fray. This is a dungeon which rewards mobility in the hallway fights. There are a lot of hallway fights.

- Amusingly after the big first fight, the alarm being raised, and then loud inter-player bickering as they moved along, someone said, "Let's move quietly to this door." Uhm, why?

- A VTT is very useful for lighting penalties. Since we go the lighting down, I haven't had to tell anyone to apply darkness penalties for shots. They just do it. Before? I could tell them every turn and they often forget them by the next person's action rolled around.

- Demon Grunts are a homebrew monster of mine based on an old mini. They're not clever or especially versitile but they're terrible foes if they get you with their claws and establish a lot of CP. Guess what? They did that. It's kind of ironic fun to inflict piles of Control Points on Doug's character. It's also interesting that the most common way to deal with CP are Spasm spells, killing the grappler, or cutting off the limb or extremity grappling the person. Attacking to reduce CP is a distant last place, only slightly ahead of - maybe tied with - just hoping the opponent lets go. Attacking to break free when already grappled, and then reducing CP, isn't easy, unless you put some real effort into improving your unarmed grappling skill . . . so I get it. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the most accurate in my experience.

- the fight will likely be a little less of a slog next time, as they PCs have hit on the novel tactic of piling damage on these foes one opponent at a time instead of trying to work individual targets down. Should work.

- Our change to Higher Purpose worked fine. +3 per die made Sigur much more effective.

- MVP was Ambassador Durinn for his healing spells and Protection from Evil spells.