Highlights of Session 2 of our Felltower Adjacent campaign.
Session 1 is here.
- we started in town, laughing at Nick the Halfling in his miniature pillory. "We" was Handsome for the latter part.
- We'd heard rumors of bandits, a death cult near a waterfall, and the usual kobold troubles. We voted for death cult, but assumed they'd all be connected. Our bard investigated and town and despite being a dirty half-elf sufficiently charmed an elf druid into telling us about the death cult.
- We tracked down the bandits, and lo and behold they were kobolds, and at a waterfall with a circle of stones outside of it.
- Handsome and the curious bard checked out the kobolds and hatched a plan. He'd Pied Piper them, invisibly going to them and then singing to lure them out of the trees where we'd ambush them.
- We did that, except our knight decided to hide behind a tree well forward of the rocks near us, so they only kinda came into ambush before they spotted him and were not even a little surprised by the others' attacks.
- We killed about eight kobolds, Handome accounting for four of them on four shots.
- We found a nearby cave and an entrance behind the waterfall. Our cleric, martial artist, Handsome, and our wizard went through the cave, the other three through the waterfall (two knights and a bard.) Inside we found lots of chanting kobolds, who then starting yelling something about "Irontooth."
- We killed lots of them, until a wizard threw a fireball and got everyone to dive prone in one side of the fight, and Irontooth showed up - a goblin rage barbarian, who shouted at us and knocked us down. Handsome shot him from prone because Heroic Archer. That sent him berserk, and he charged.
- Eventually in a messy fight the kobolds were all killed. Persistance, one of our knights, charged the kobold mage, who had Flaming Armor on. But Chop, our cleric, put Resist Fire on him, and he beat the kobold to death in a split second with his two-handed flail. Meanwhile Handsome shot the eyes out of Irontooth and our martial artist sliced at him with a katana and wounded him a bit, but shirtless savage prevented most damage. Handsome shot him again and then everyone else decided to jump in. The bard taunted him, the wizard stabbed him with a longsword (twice, even, once using All-Out Attack), and our other knight chopped his neck twice for lots of damage. The goblin tried to slam the wizard and missed, narrowly avoiding real disaster . . . and so Handsome shot the goblin down from behind. He babbled something about Franz* and Lord Orcus and then died.
- We looted them, found a big ivory statue of Orcus, and took a chest mostly full of copper for our trouble.
- We cut their heads off, Handsome split them all with an axe (death cult, Orcus is undead friendly according to our cleric), and cut the tattoo off of the goblin.
- We spent 3 hours and the cleric used Exorcism to purify the evil ring of stones outside.
- We went back to town and turned in kobold ears and sold stuff. We netted 8 xp (5 xp loot, 2 xp for a big fight, 1 xp for purifying the unholy site) and $612 each.
Handsome is saving his points for one of Combat Reflexes, Luck, or Extra Attack. Probably that's the order of priority. Point awards are more standard DFRPG and thus a lot more generous than my standard.
* But not Hans.
You guys have had a fairly easy time so far, making *mostly* good decisions in the various combats (and I think the pied piper ambush was a good one for IQ 8/9 kobolds, which are kind of like Dinomen but more advanced technologically and more skilled).
ReplyDeleteI thought you guys might have fared worse with Irontooth, but: (a) you got very lucky with people somehow making their DX rolls, or, in the case of the wizard, making his concentration roll so as to not drop his 3d lightning; and (b) dropping the blunt force trauma was a good (expedient) idea, but might have made things a bit more interesting, giving some shock penalties and doing a little bit of injury (only 3-5) to some of the squishier folks. I also think maybe he should have used his Shout of Force again, but it felt thematically more appropriate to have him try to All-Out Attack (Double) with his axe rather than use the axe and the shout as well. Of course, smashing the wizard took out a major potential problem.
In any event--fun! Lots of characters showed off their stuff, so to speak, including the Cleric who smartly cast Resist Fire on the person who would chase down and kill the caster who had Flaming Armor on.
I honestly don't see what's so complicated about blunt trauma, anyway. Handsome failed his DX roll, but ignoring posture penalties comes with Heroic Archer so it wasn't really relevant.
DeleteAlthough we generally play Berserk by the spirit over the letter, I'm also not sure using a non-damage causing Shout to push foes further away would be a valid choice given the spirit of the disadvantage, nevermind the letter of it. Inflicting Knockback Only instead of running foes town to chop them up? Seems tactically doubtful when your desire is to get closer and kill them, regardless of the origin of that desire.
"ignoring posture penalties comes with Heroic Archer"
ReplyDeleteWait, where does this come fro-
/checks Martial Arts, then DFRPG
Huh, another tiny difference. This is one of those things I dislike about the "Powered by" line, but it really does seem to just be DFRPG. I don't find all these tiny little changes in the other couple of other PbGURPS books.
It's also one of those "if the Player doesn't notice, I (the GM) won't notice".