So the PCs had a goal today - kill a stone bull and a chimera. They managed to blunder into some crushrooms and maul one, wound a few more, and then retreat and head home.
The PCs had a good point - fighting an open-field monster (stone bull) and a flying monster with ranged attacks (chimera) outdoors is probably not ideal. Sneaking up on them out of the dark is probably better. The cost, though, for doing so, was well demonstrated in the session.
The problem with going through the dungeon include:
- it takes time. Game time and in-game time. There is no "fast forward" through the dungeon like we do for overland.
- there is no guarantee that you won't get into additional fights.
- there are distractions.
- there are hazards.
All came up today.
It took 2 hours to get to the crushrooms in the real world (10 am to 12 noon), that long or a bit more in actual in-game time delving.
They got into an additional fight which almost certainly alerted their target monsters.
They got distracted by the scrying room, briefly, and by the dead ogres, briefly.
They got stuck in a half-bent portcullis, fell in pits, fell down stairs, and used up FP on repeated attempts to force doors.
It also took some time as they fought the crushrooms in an area I didn't have set up for a battle map, so I had to pause the game for a few minutes and hurriedly draw walls on a scan of the map zoomed in and uploaded. I did it fast - I've gotten good at it over time - but geez, I had the other one ready to go. Foolish me, when they said they'd just go right there from the outside and attack the monsters, I believed them. I didn't prepare for the alternative.
Ironically, the problem with fighting flying monsters outdoors is that you can't melee them effectively . . . yet they have a scout, and the spell Flight. They also have Walk on Air and missile spells, so the ground-bound monster is likely out of luck against anyone who doesn't choose to fight it directly. I feel like they outsmarted themselves - convinced themselves that sneaking up was so valuable that they spent the whole session on it. The crushrooms are still intact, too, which is likely an obstacle to future delves in either direction.
Perfect Illusion says it fools all senses except Touch. Just FYI, I rule that to mean hearing, vision, and even smell - but not touch and therefore not taste (since you can't taste without touch.) I don't take it to mean "all possible senses." In DF, there are many ways to sense and target - the normal senses, plus various forms of Detect, Vibration Sense, and magic come to mind.
Someone wondered why no one filled the pit at the entrance full of cement. Probably because it's 60 x 20 x 30 feet. 36,000 cubic feet. You'd need 1333.33 cubic yards of fill. Create Earth isn't permanent.
Someone also wanted to use Shape Earth to shape metal. No, sorry, it doesn't do that - earth and stone, but not metal. There is a GURPS Magic college with metal spells which I very specifically do not use in Felltower.
Shape Earth is permanent, right. Given time they could shape the pit closed or at the least create a stone bridge across the opening. They need 20 x 3 = 60 square feet of surface, probably 6 inches thick would be sufficient to support a character's weight, so 30 cubic feet of stone shaped. They can extract the material from the walls the the pit, making it trapezoidal--wider at the bottom than the top, with a narrow walking bridge over the top. The bridge could be narrower but 1 yard feels safe for a regular walk across without risk. Cutting it down it would be possible to cross 2 feet or 1 foot but the narrower the more careful and slow the characters would have to go and might have to roll DEX/balance if it gets very narrow.
ReplyDeleteYou are totally right, they were overthinking the danger of attacking from the outside of the cave vs the value of surprise. As you point out, the chimera would have advantage over ground targets, but they have the capability to level the playing field with the chimera and get advantage over the iron bull. That's probably better than a fair fight. If they come in through the dungeon they still aren't guaranteed to get surprise and as they were reminded there are always costs to going through the dungeon.
The walls and floors are magic-resistant, but there is a seed of a solution in that suggestion.
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