DF Session 185, Felltower 125 - Return to Felltower

Sunday's game was day one in Felltower proper for all of these PCs, and for two of the players. It was nice to get back to the tangle of tunnels that is Felltower.

Date: 10/29/2023

Weather: Light rainy, cool.

Characters

Chop, human cleric (298 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (297 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (290 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (298 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (297 points)
Urbaine Fabre, half-elf bard (298 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf martial artist (250 points)

On October 28th, the group arrived from West Adventurewood,* where they had put down some weird monsters not actually appearing elsewhere in Felltower or its environs. They quickly found places to stay in town, placed a bunch of special orders. They heard a number of rumors - the orcs are gone, a cone-hatted wizard took a bunch of animals up the mountain and didn't return, and that things have been quiet since the adventurers weren't around . . . that kind of stuff. The next day, the 29th, they headed into Felltower.

They carefully scouted the ruins, and found the way down. They created a bunch of light stones, and then Duncan buffed up Vlad with lots of Keen Senses spells and then Invisibility. He rolled an 18 on the Invisibility spell . . . he was sure he'd messed up, but gotten lucky because the spell clearly worked. Hurrah! No worries then, time to move on.

Vlad scouted the entranceway, and checked the pit - nothing dangerous, just the usual dirt, leaves, bones, and bits of damp junk. Unable to jump across, he came back. They tried the trapdoor, but it was closed and zapped Urbaine's Created Servant, destroying it. They headed into the main entrance.

After some discussion, they pitoned in two ropes on the left side, Hannari jumped the pit, and hammered in two more. They they crossed; Urbaine almost fell but was dug out by Levitation, which Duncan pulled off only after a 17 cancelled all of his Movement spells. Oops. A couple walked/climbed over (+3 for the ropes, minus encumbrance) and the rest were brought over with Levitation, including their servant since it carries Urbaine's backpack.

They checked the portcullises and found them all down. The right one was down, the left down but badly bent, as if something strong spread the bars to squeeze through. They spent about 30 minutes or so of time on the right side, first lifting the portcullis, then nailing it up, and then working on the door beyond. The door is metal, without visible handle, lock, or hinges, and meshes well with the metal wall it is mounted it. The stone around it is worked and -10 to affect with magic. They tried their best to crowbar it open, and failed. So Urbain cast Create Object and make a pickaxe. One solid whang from Thor did about 12 or 13 damage or so and didn't even mark the metal.

They have gave up and checked the other side. It would be a tight squeeze (Escape +5, minus encumbrance) so some squeezed by. Urbaine wanted to bend it further apart since it was too warped to lift anymore. Thor tried a pull or two but didn't manage much; Persistance was too weak do bend it at all. They gave up when it became clear this was a bit of a project.

They forced the door beyond open - it was much more loose in its mounting, clearly having been heavily battered by something strong. It was still a working door but a crowbar fit in easily. They opened it and moved on.

They avoided the nearby sunken temple, and smelled spoiled meat and cooking smells in a nearby room . . . or close to it, anyway. They moved on quickly, reasoning that it was long past and anyway nothing on the upper levels would be worth looting since it had been cleared many times in the past.

Next it was down a long hallways, passing mostly closed doors. One door was open, so Vlad peeked in. He saw a child-sized figure huddled in a corner wearing a cloak pulled up to its head, as is sleeping. He looked in . . . and rolled an 18 on his Per check and a huge spider jumped on his face and started to bite him. Despite his dwarven resistance to poison he suffered pretty badly from its two bites. He tried to shoot it off his own face (we call this a -10, per prior rulings, with the extra penalties coming from having to reverse the bow draw and shoot in a way to not hit yourself except on a critical failure.) He just missed. His buddies ran up and saw a spider biting an invisible target. Thor burned it off with his flaming sword, and Persistance smashed it to bits.

The child was a halfling adult, long dead and dried to a husk, possessed of nothing of value. Realizing the Invisibility spell was still on, but clearly not working right, Duncan waited until he needed to maintain it and let it fade. But it wouldn't; he paid his FP and it was still going against his plans. So he concentrated, spent 1 FP, and rolled against his original skill to cast it. That worked, and he was able to force it away. It was clear that only they couldn't see their scout this whole time. Sigh.

They moved on, setting off an alarm by passing through one room. They hurried on, and briefly looked at the painting and mosaics in the hallway ahead before someone noted the map said "pits." So they pulled back and went around.

Soon they found webs in a hallway, so they cleared that with the flaming sword, again.

Another hallway they passed was full of webs, which means spiders and treasure (I think this was the logic), so they moved in. They cleared the webs with the sword, again, and ran into two humongous spiders. They killed them in a crisp fight, which went poorly for the spiders because they didn't gain surprise and faced armed and armored Thor. Hannari wanted them preserved for draining their venom as loot, but that didn't happen. One was mostly intact after an eye shot from Vlad, but when they moved on past it, it woke back up. Persistance (I think) bashed it to pieces.

They found a large room full of webs and hundreds - call it 300-400 or so? Spiders ranging from quarter size up to fist sized. Duncan used Create Fire to fill a 9' diameter circle and Shape Fire to sweep it back and forth across the room, torching most of them. They found no loot.

Further on, they explained to the newbies (Aren't they all newbies?) that there was no point in investigating the room of pools because all the good stuff was done, and the pool of dreams was a distraction. Then they ran into a patrolling back pudding. They pounded on it until it stopped moved, with Thor facing it down with his shield so it couldn't reach anyone. He dropped his sword in the fight, which has happened enough that he renamed the sword something like Slipgrip.

Eventually they found their way to the second level, and found the hidden room with the red six-fingered handprint. A few of them touched it - Urbaine, Vlad, Thor, and they suffered the usual damage, FP loss, and DX and HT penalties. Past this they listened (presumably for the stirges mentioned on their map), and heard nothing special besides the usual rat noises, distant clunks and echoes, etc.

Moving up the hallway to the right, they spotted a black hemisphere on the ceiling of the room ahead, marked with runes. They backed off, explained that these shoot black fire, and shot it apart with Vlad's bow.

They worked their way to the GFS, passsing the room marked "Teleport Room," despite a couple guys with Curious.

Next, they headed to the magic altar, planning to have everyone touch it hoping to get some silver turned to gold. Getting there was tricky - part of the way was blocked by plugs of shaped stone, and another by mold. Brown, nasty, sharp, jagged, spore-spewing disease-spreading mold. They spend some time trying to figure out how to clear the mold, set it all off and Purify Air to pass by, and so on. In the end they gave up, created a few shovels, and cleared a nearby plug of rubble with the help of Shape Earth. Beyond it they found a hexagonal room with a rotating six-fingered statue. Thor touched it, but it didn't zap him, which they ascribed to his touching of the red hand print. Urbaine turned the statue and was zapped, but doing so didn't do anything. ("Because it's for a puzzle treasure room and we looted it," said some PCs who didn't loot it.)

They touched the altar when they reached it - at least, everyone except Chop, who was suspicious of anything not of the Good God. A couple of them had their lost health restored, Thor and someone else got Danger Sense, Duncan's weapons are all Puissance +2 - all for the next 24 hours. Hannari had 42 silver pieces turned to gold pieces; they'd hoped for more people and more coins.

They headed to the staircase and down, carefully checking for traps, and trying the door on the middle landing to no avail.

At the bottom, they opened the door and discussed where to go; they had only one immediately option, which was forward. Ahead was a square room with four exits including theirs. In it were a trio of ratmen! Two hurled crystals out of their bodies at Vlad, slicing his arm and foot. He shot one, badly wounding him, and called for help. The PCs rushed forward.

In a brief but blood combat, they cut down the two crystal-studded ratmen and a fritzing, fading, phase ratman, but not before the armor-piercing crystals and armor-bypassing blunt claws of the ratmen did some damage. The ratmen went berserk when injured, which kept them fighting furiously even in the face of piles of damage. A fourth ratman, with an electric aura, zapped Persistance and Thor as they tried to cut it down. It had called an alarm before running into the fray, however, and they heard barking and growling.

They quickly started to try to form up to fall back to the doorway as they saw a dozen gnolls rushing them.

Duncan quickly asked if they wanted him to end the fight with a wall of stone. They demurred, wanting to fight the gnolls and grab their equipment for sale.

We ended it there, as it was late (around 8 pm, we started at 11) and the fight was bound to be long.

* From the town of D'Andy Fortheditionburg. They do things differently there.

Notes:

- I told everyone to pay upkeep. I'm pretty certain no one listened, but I'll need to double check. At least one of my players just does those things automatically, but I think some people just overlooked it in the excitement of the switchover. Same with special orders - I know people made them, but I think I saw literally one roll made in Foundry, so I suspect people have a bunch of back-rolling to do for their orders.

- Lots of VTT problems today. One very big one.

- The delve was interesting. It's been ~15 months or more since any PCs delved into Felltower. All of the PCs were new. But it pretty much went exactly like any delve prior to the last TPK. Scout the main entrance, try the spiral staircase trapdoor, try the shortest route to level 2, argue about the importance of staying on target but getting diverted by small stuff, touch the hands, touch the altar, and down to the "apartment level" aka "level 4" and a rush at the end of the session to get into a fight because maybe what they fight has loot. The only difference were the PCs, not the delve. It was purely institutional memeory driven. Everything was even expressed as, "We've done (this and that)" not "We've heard . . . ," which was somewhat disconcerting. I won't say it was wasted time, but there was a lot of time warning new players about Durak, the Lord of Spite, and his warning sounds, how previous fights went against him, the story behind the orcs, how the red hand marks on the walls work, etc. I have zero problems with institutional memory, but it did take some of the game time up going over history. And it felt pretty ridiculous to have new PCs lecturing new PCs as if they did all of the things.

- bending the bars was a good demo of how I GM. Urbaine's player pointed out the bars had DR 9, and some HP, and Thor did 2d damage, so eventually he'd manage to bend them further, so did we need to game that out or just move on? Game it out. Make the rolls, or do the math on how long it'll take to inflict damage based on 2d vs. 9 DR and the HP I'd track and spend the time while I roll to see if anything happens along (and likely from outside, not inside the doors they wanted open.) That's how Felltower goes. I wasn't terribly sympatheic because they could already squeeze by, they just wanted to remodel the dungeon for better fleeing potential, and I don't handwave dungeon remodelling as a campaign style decision.

- Create Servant and Create Object are extremely useful spells in megadungeon delving.

- I can't run fights in the VTT without putting down tokens for enemies. When I do so, no matter what, someone will move their token, make sure of the facing, base their range or reach based on the tokens on the page, etc. They just can't help it.

- Once again the mold was a problem. No one has an easy way around it, and the hard ways are all time consuming and resource expensive. There was talk of taking a specimen home to get fungicide made for it, but - importantly - no one actually made the rolls to do this.

- Duncan offered to end the delve with a wall of Created Earth so they could escape. They have enough loot for 20% of their threshold, or 2 xp, +1 for each of touching onto levels 2 and 4, for 4 xp. Instead they wanted to reach their loot threshold, gaming on a quick win for 3 xp more. Probably not the worst move, but with so many items on special order (armor, weapons, ammo) I was actually a little surprised they didn't just go for the quick exit and back to town to return more prepared.

- MVP was Duncan for that amusing 18 on Invisibility. Heh. I love 3-4 and 17-18, they're such a fun chance for me to unleash creative nastiness - either pro- or anti-caster, when they occur.


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