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Saturday, November 25, 2023

DF Session 187, Felltower 125 - Fighting the Werewolves

This is finishing up a fight started in a previous session.

Actual Date: November 24th, 2023
Game Date: October 29th, 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)

We picked up in the middle of a fight with werewolves.

The PCs rushed forward, finishing off the badly wounded werewolves in front of them and moving into the room ahead.

Vlad saw three werewolves down the hallway were he'd seen a wounded one fleeing. He saw that one and two others - a human and a werewolf.

Persistance and Thor rushed over, only to find a Grease spell across the hallway. Persistance fell, and ended up crawling across the floor to reach the enemy. Thor slowly worked his way across the floor, blocking a fireball from a wand held by the human! Persistance took a couple of fireballs himself, getting badly burned and lit on fire despite his armor.

Another werewolf attacked from behind the PCs, and reached Chop before Hanari attacked him. Hannari slashed at him with his kamas, Duncan put 2-3 6d Stone Missile spells into him, and Vlad doubled back to try and hit him with an arrow. It took a while, but they eventually put him down, but not before sinking his canines into Hanari's left leg.

Meanwhile on the other end Chop eventually put Resist Fire on Persistance, Urbaine used Rapier Wit to stun a werewolf, and Thor used his sword to ct them up a bit.

Just as they were about to break through against the werewolves, Duncan put Flight on Hanari. Hanari flew up and into the fray and helped end it quickly. The two werewolves went down, and the "regular human" with the wand bounced Thor off of him when he was hit with a shield rush. He turned into a werewolf, dropping the wand and slashing away with his claws. Hanari cut him a few times from behind and Thor from the front and he dropped.

Chop went around and pressed silver coins into each and every eye (so, 16 sp) and Hanari gave all of them a finishing slash with his silvered kama. They looted the bodies and headed back home.

Back in town they paid $100 per injured person to cleanse their wounds from the werewolves, since they carry their curse in their bite and claws.

Notes:

- I need to do a revision of the shield rushing rules. We've used the rules as written because our new player knows them by heart, but I think they're actually kinda bogus. I'll explain in another post what I dislike and how I'll run them. I'm 99% sure Thor's shield is a buckler, not a shield, so we can add "knows them by heart but doesn't know Doug's PC's equipment by heart." Forgivable, but annoying to have yet another example of "forgot the rules that hurt me."

- Does it take 1 second and concentration for a werewolf to change forms? Eh, probably by the rules. Here? No. I don't think it's a big deal.

- Vlad wanted to take prisoners, again. No one listened, and I'm not sure why. Taking prisoners is tough when it's easier slightly delayed execution, or being brought back to town and killed there.

- Most of the discussion about the wand was about selling it and its value, and the importantance of getting the user before he used up more of the value of the treasure. Not, you know, the value of a Wand of Fireballs as an item. Same with the potions found a while back - luckily potions has a standard sale value so they're at best worth $100.

- XP was:

4 xp loot
0 xp exploration
1 xp first time on level 2
1 xp first time on level 3
1 xp first time on level 4

7 xp each.

No MVP on the final session because it was just 2 1/2 hours of a fight.

XP was good but it took 2 1/2 sessions for it. Had the party done the same stuff, but left after each session, I think the XP would have been 2 xp, 5 xp, and 5 xp. So pushing for maximum bonuses and delving until they found lots of loot really didn't pay off in a meta-game sense. Not that I want people delving solely on maximizing XP but it's a little frustrating to spend multiple sessions in the dungeon for sub-maximal gains, and then hear about how there needs to be easier areas to "level up."

3 comments:

  1. Thor's medium shield is definitely a buckler. The new shield, which I believe will be ready by the next delve, is in my mind a kite shield, which - having looked - seems to mostly be a strapped shield.

    I'm interested to see where you go with the shield slam rules. I know where I would go if I were starting from scratch.

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  2. Vladimir wants to get prisoners because prisoners have *information* and information can lead to easier delves and more loot. We should give thoughts to Thor or Persistence carrying some manacles and leg irons... He's fine freeing some of these prisoners, assuming they don't go back to Felltower and screw things up for us. Not sure how we could accomplish that, though. And they could potentially give enemies information on *us* (which we don't want). It's a conundrum. I guess if various "monster races" (gnolls, etc.) are reviled in town and are going to be executed, well, that could be a problem, yeah.

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    Replies
    1. That's fine, but you can't bring them back to town as loot. You have to deal with them there and then during the delve and during a session. Town isn't just safe for you guys, it's just flat out safe. Monsters and races with the appropriate social stigmas will be treated accordingly but you don't get to interrogate them first unless you do it before returning to town.

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